Temperature and Pressure Effects on Cavitation Erosion in Diesel-Like Fuels

In the present work hydrodynamic cavitation erosion in a square channel made of Al99.0 is experimentally investigated under static flow conditions. It was found that the normalized maximum erosion rate (nRoE)_max increases nonlinearly with the rail pressure between 100 bar and 500 bar. The presence and magnitude of back pressure determines the axial position of erosion in the test section. The flow temperature influence on cavitation erosion in calibration fluid ISO 4113 is investigated between the nondimensional temperatures θ = 0.13 and θ = 0.40. The highest cavitation aggressiveness is detected at about θ = 0.29. To explain this result, numerical calculations based on the Rayleigh-Plesset equation with respect to the thermodynamic effect of cavitation are conducted. For the single-component fuel n-decane the same overall trend and a temperature dependent maximum erosion rate of θ = 0.29 was calculated.