Cavitation and Effective Liquid Tension of Nitrogen in a Hydrodynamic Cryogenic Tunnel

Abstract

Cavitation may be described as the local vaporization of a liquid brought about by-reductions in pressure due to changes in flow velocity. For the most part, cavitation is undesirable. It is damaging, often to the point of destruction; it is noisy, usually is accompanied by vibration; and it usually degrades the flow pattern. It is generally assumed that cavitation will occur if the local minimum pressure within a flowing system is reduced to the fluid vapor pressure. Also, the pressure within a cavity, or cavitated region, is usually thought to be at the vapor pressure corresponding to stream liquid temperature. These assumptions are not always valid [^1–6] and recent experimental evidence that shows to what extent these assumptions may be invalid (for a particular model) constitutes the subject of the present paper.