Author(s)

Toshiharu Kazama, Kento Kumagai, Yasuhiro Osafune, Yukihito Narita, Shohei Ryu

College of Design and Manufacturing Technology, Muroran Institute of Technology, Muroran, Japan.

To study the effect of impingement surface geometry, a cavitation erosion experiment was conducted using a submerged cavitating jet rig with hydraulic oil. The test setup comprised a test chamber with a long-orifice nozzle, a hydraulic pump with an electric motor, hydraulic auxiliaries, including valves, a cooler, a filter, a reservoir, and measuring instruments, including pressure gages and a thermometer. Hexahedral specimens made of aluminum alloy with flat and grooved surfaces and oblique angles were prepared. Hydraulic oil with a viscosity grade of 32 was used at 40°C as the test fluid. The upstream absolute pressure was kept at 10.1 MPa and the cavitation numbers were set at 0.02 - 0.04. The results of this experiment yielded the following conclusions. The mass loss of the grooved specimens did not increase monotonically as the exposure time increased. The standoff distances at the maximum mass loss for the flat and grooved specimens were almost equivalent. The mass loss decreased as the oblique angle increased and the cavitation number increased, regardless of the presence of grooves. The surfaces were eroded in a ring-like region, but the region elongated as the angle increased. For the grooved specimens, the ridges on the ring were eroded, and when the directions of the grooves and the flow matched, the roots and flanks were severely eroded.

Oil-Hydraulics, Cavitation, Erosion, Jet, Grooves

Kazama, T. , Kumagai, K. , Osafune, Y. , Narita, Y. and Ryu, S. (2015) Erosion of Grooved Surfaces by Cavitating Jet with Hydraulic Oil. Journal of Flow Control, Measurement & Visualization, 3, 41-50. doi: 10.4236/jfcmv.2015.32005.