The Development of Cavity Clusters in Tensile Stress Fields

Summary

The development of a cavity cluster from a distribution of supercritical cavitation nuclei at their exposure to tensile stress is discussed. An approach to this problem was presented by Hansson et al. [1], and is the basis of further analysis and comparison of planar and spherical cavity cluster development. The stress penetration into the cluster depends primarily on the inter-cavity distance and on the cluster form. In interplay with the cavity dynamics it determines an acoustic impedance of the cluster boundary which approaches zero during cavity growth, and so the tensile stress at the boundary resulting from the incident and the reflected waves becomes small which indicates that not only this pressure but also the equilibrium pressures of the cavities are important for the cluster development.