Cavitation conditions, experimental determinations

Spectroscopic Probes of Cavitation Conditions. Determination of the temperatures reached ia a cavitating bubble has remained a difficult experimental problem. As a spectroscopic probe of the cavitation event, MBSL provides a solution. High resolution MBSL spectra from sUicone oU under Ar have been reported and analy2ed (7). The observed emission comes from excited state has been modeled with synthetic spectra as a... 

Spectroscopic Probes of Cavitation Conditions. Determination of the temperatures reached in a cavitating bubble has remained a difficult experimental problem. As a spectroscopic probe of the cavitation event, MBSL provides a solution. High resolution MBSL spectra from silicone oil under Ar have been reported and analyzed (7). The observed emission comes from excited state C2 and has been modeled with synthetic spectra as a function of rotational and vibrational temperatures, as shown in Figure 7. From comparison of synthetic to observed spectra, the effective cavitation temperature is 5050 =L 150 K. The excellence of the match between the observed MBSL and the synthetic spectra provides definitive proof that the sonoluminescence event is a thermal, chemiluminescence process. The agreement between this spectroscopic determination of the cavitation temperature and that made by comparative rate thermometry of sonochemical reactions is surprisingly dose (6). 

The high temperatures and pressures created during transient cavitation are difficult both to calculate and to determine experimentally. The simplest models of collapse, which neglect heat transport and the effects of condensable vapor, predict maximum temperatures and pressures as high as 10,000 K and 10,000 atmospheres. More realistic estimates from increasingly sophisticated hydrodynamic models yield estimates of 5000 K and 1000 atmospheres with effective residence times of <100 nseconds, but the models are very sensitive to initial assumptions of the boundary conditions (30-32). 

Recently Perusich and Alkire [105] have proposed a mathematical model to determine the reaction and transport between liquid microjets and a reactive solid surface. Conditions were established under which oxide depassivation and repassivation occurs as a function of ultrasonic intensity, surface film thickness, and fluid microjet surface coverage. The model was based on the concept that cavitation induces sufficient momentum and mass transfer rates (water hammer pressures as described earlier) at a surface to create oxide film stresses leading to depassivation. The model was used to evaluate experimental data on the corrosion behavior of iron in sulfuric acid [106,107], Focused ultrasound was used to investigate processes that influence depassivation and repassivation phenomena on pure and cast iron in 2N H2S04 at two ultrasound frequencies and at power intensities of up to 7.8 kW/cm2. 

The latter condition occurs at a pressure slightly below where vaporization just begins. The difference in pressure between cavitation and normal vaporization is equal to the net positive suction head minus the drop in head pressure in the pump. Normally this must be determined experimentally and is a characteristic of the pump and the fluid. 

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