Incubation Time and Cavitation Erosion Rate of Work-Hardening Materials

A phenomenological analysis of the cavitation erosion process of ductile materials is proposed. On the material side, the main parameters are the thickness of the hardened layer together with the conventional yield strength and ultimate strength. On the fluid side, the erosive potential of the cavitating flow is described in a simplified way using three integral parameters: rate, mean amplitude, and mean size of hydrodynamic impact loads. Explicit equations are derived for the computation of the incubation time and the steady-state erosion rate. They point out two characteristic scales. The time scale, which is relevant to the erosion phenomenon, is the covering time—the time necessary for the impacts to cover the material surface—whereas the pertinent length scale for ductile materials is the thickness of the hardened layer. The incubation time is proportional to the covering time with a multiplicative factor, which strongly depends on flow aggressiveness in terms of the mean amplitude of impact loads. As for the erosion rate under steady-state conditions, it is scaled by the ratio of the thickness of hardened layers to the covering time with an additional dependence on flow aggressiveness, too. The approach is supported by erosion tests conducted in a cavitation tunnel at a velocity of 65 m/s on stainless steel 316 L. Flow aggressiveness is inferred from pitting tests. The same model of material response that was used for mass loss prediction is applied to derive the original hydrodynamic impact loads due to bubble collapses from the geometric features of the pits. Long duration tests are performed in order to determine experimentally the incubation time and the mean depth of penetration rate and to validate the theoretical approach.