Effect of air bubble size on cavitation erosion reduction

Over the past 60 years, the air concentration in water has been considered as a control index of cavitation erosion reduction and widely used in the designs of hydraulic structures. However, the mechanism of air entrainment against cavitation erosion has been paid good attention to. In the present work, the effect of air bubble size on cavitation erosion reduction was experimentally investigated. A device with micron-scale orifice diameters (10, 20 and 50 μm in size) was specially designed to introduce air bubbles into water. The experiments about the effect of air bubble size were conducted by means of a vibratory apparatus, including the behavior of formation and movement for single air bubble, the characteristics of cavitation erosion reduction at different air entrainment conditions. The findings demonstrate that high air concentration has significant effects on cavitation erosion reduction. But, a notable problem was that the size of air bubbles is of outstanding effect on cavitation erosion reduction. Small air bubbles support to alleviate cavitation erosion, even at same air concentration.