Wear on Common Brass and Aluminum by Cavitation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1679-0375.2026.v47.52516Keywords:
wear, plastic deformation, cavities, erosionAbstract
Damages by cavitation are responsible for greater costs to the machine hydraulics industry. To study the effects of the collapse on a solid surface, a rotating disk test rig was used here to create cavities (or bubbles) in water. In the apparatus, these cavities are led to collapse on the surface of common brass and aluminum specimens. After that, the specimens are observed with the aid of a scanning electron microscope (SEM), where the damages on the specimens are analyzed, showing pits and approximate circular areas on their surfaces. An explanation is presented here for the pits, as well as images of the specimens before and after the collapses. The pits are certainly made by liquid hot micro-jet impingement resulting from the cavity in the final stages of its collapse, on the specimen surface, associated with pressure waves resulting from bubble oscillations. Damages on brass were evaluated by mean depth penetration, volume loss, volume loss rate and mass loss rate. The results are compared with the results of the available bibliography, from the 1980s until today. All specimens tested showed some kind of surface damage, such as pits and small craters resulting from cavitation. The results obtained here are very close to the ones obtained by other researchers for the brass and the aluminum specimens, respectively, despite the test rig used. Some new calculations were performed here to better justify the experimental results.
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