Development of Visualized Water Hydraulic Experiment System for Studying the Bubble Flow Pattern Inside Valve

To study the flow pattern mechanism of cavitation and erosion in water hydraulic valves, a visualized water hydraulics experiment for testing the bubble flow was designed and conducted in this paper. An ergonomic design method was adopted to ensure with the characteristics of the visualized experiment platform of being modular, movable, networked, adopting a virtual three-dimensional vision and safety, respectively, were adhered. An experimental video acquisition subsystem with an optimized arrangement of 5 plane mirrors was presented to observe and analyze the bubble flow pattern in a transparent hydraulic valve. An algorithm was developed to extract the 2-D bubble features and reconstruct the 3-D bubble flow pattern. The 2-D and 3-D calculated results were analyzed, which effectively reconstructed the bubble flow. During the 2-D and 3-D results analysis for a selected period of time, the visualized water hydraulics experiment system in this paper met the expected performance requirements.