Journal of Materials Processing Tech.

282 (2020) 116668

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Journal of Materials Processing Tech.

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Cavitation intensity and erosion pattern of a self-excited cavitating jet T

Yan Pan, Fei Ma*, Boshen Liu, Tengfei Cai
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Associate Editor: A Clare The self-excited water jet technology is widely used in submerged conditions, while its performance is restricted
Keywords: under high confining pressure. To improve its erosive capability, the cavitation intensity and the erosion pattern
Cavitation intensity of a self-excited cavitating jet (SECJ) were investigated through mass loss and the microscopic images of the
Erosion pattern eroded specimens. The experiment was carried out in a certain range of cavitation numbers (σ = 0.05 ∼ 0.15),
Self-excited cavitating jet within which the SECJ can achieve strong oscillation. The results showed that, the cavitation intensity peaked at
Cavitation number two optimum standoff distances under different cavitation numbers. The first one barely changed, while the
Standoff distance second one decreased monotonously with increasing cavitation numbers. The selection of the optimum standoff
distance was investigated for the jet to perform better erosion effect. Three typical erosion patterns containing
several erosion rings were distinguished, of which different characteristics such as large erosion area or deep
erosion valley could be achieved by adjusting the standoff distance. The variation of the erosion patterns under
different conditions was preliminarily explained using an impingement model. The obtained results demon-
strated that the SECJ could produce strong erosion under high confining pressure, and be effectively applied for
material removal with low power consumption in submerged fields like deep-sea mining or ship hull cleaning.

1. Introduction
Waterjet technology is currently used for various industrial appli-
cations like surface hardening (He et al., 2020), ship hull cleaning
(Nassiraei et al., 2012) or subsea trenching (Na et al., 2015) due to its
erosion ability under submerged condition. While as the exploitation
depth increases, the erosion intensity and machining performance of
the normal water jet have a dramatic decline due to the resistance of the
confining pressure on the jet impingement. Based on the intensive
shockwaves and micro-jets generated by the collapse of cavitation
bubbles, the cavitating jet is much more powerful and can be effectively
applied under deeper submerged condition. Thus the cavitation in-
tensity of the cavitating jet has been an area of intense investigation.
The cavitation intensity of the cavitating jet is influenced by many
parameters including hydrodynamic conditions (Kang et al., 2018),
nozzle parameters (Marcon et al., 2018) and material properties (Hutli
et al., 2016a), among which, several key factors such as cavitation
number, standoff distance, and nozzle configuration have received
significant attention. Soyama (2017) compared the performance of the
cavitating jet in air, in water, and within the pressurized chamber, the
results indicated that the cavitating jet was much more erosive under
pressurized condition. Subsequently, the comparison of the mass loss of
eroded specimens showed that the cavitation intensity achieved a peak
when the cavitation number was approximately 0.014 (Soyama, 1998).
Momma and Lichtarowicz (1995) studied how the cavitation intensity
of the cavitating jet varied with standoff distance, and the results
showed that there were several local optimum standoff distances, and
the dominant one was determined by the cavitation number. Hutli et al.
(2016b) reported that the erosion area increased as the cavitation
number decreased due to the impact of cavitation number on jet
spreading angle.
For better application of cavitating jet under high confining pres-
sure, the selection of erosion pattern is of great importance, thus the
relationship between the erosion pattern and the cavitation intensity of
the cavitating jet has also been intensively investigated. Based on pre-
vious studies, several typical erosion patterns were observed on the
eroded specimen, like ring-type pattern and circle-type pattern
(Fujisawa et al., 2018), and the mass loss of ring-type pattern was
generally greater than that of other patterns (Watanabe et al., 2016).
The formation of different erosion patterns is also influenced by
standoff distance (Hutli et al., 2018), cavitation number (Kazama et al.,
2011), nozzle configuration (Bitting et al., 2001) and impinging angle
(Marcon et al., 2016), et al. Through pitting analysis and numerical
simulation, Peng et al. (2018) found out that the influence of standoff
distance on the transformation of erosion patterns was attributed to the
distribution of stagnation region and recirculation zone of the jet above

⁎
Corresponding author at: No. 30 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China.
E-mail address: yeke@ustb.edu.cn (F. Ma).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2020.116668
Received 14 October 2019; Received in revised form 13 February 2020; Accepted 21 February 2020
Available online 22 February 2020
0924-0136/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y. Pan, et al.
the specimen. The effect of cavitation number on the erosion pattern
could be attributed to different levels of cavitation effect and flow field
structure. Hattori and Takinami (2010) compared the eroded area
caused by cavitation and by liquid impingement, where the specimens
were eroded in a W-shaped form and a conical form respectively.
Among different kinds of nozzles proposed to improve the cavitation
intensity of the cavitating jet, self-excited nozzles, including the organ-
pipe nozzles and the Helmholtz nozzles, are widely used. Self-excited
nozzles are known to excite the jet acoustically, and the periodical
shedding of the large vortex structures and cavitation clouds can greatly
enhance the cavitation intensity under higher submerged condition
(Chahine and Johnson, 1985). Jorgensen (1961) indicated that the
shedding frequency of large vortex structures of the jet scaled with
varying cavitation numbers. And Johnson et al. (1981) proposed that
the jet performance was enhanced markedly when the jet was acoustic
resonating in a certain range of cavitation numbers. Based on the im-
pinging flow field (Johnson et al., 1984), a ring-type erosion pattern
can be produced by the self-excited cavitating jet (SECJ) under high
confining pressure. Although SECJ are preferred due to its strong
pressure oscillation and cavitation effect under higher ambient pres-
sure, its erosion property were less reported. Limited studies have been
carried out about the influence of the cavitation numbers and standoff
distances on the cavitation intensity of the SECJ, and about the varia-
tion of erosion patterns produced by the SECJ, which need to be further
investigated. The objective of this paper is to investigate the erosion
property of the SECJ, the cavitation intensity and the erosion pattern
are considered to obtain the expected results.
In this study, erosion tests under different cavitation numbers and
standoff distances are performed to investigate the erosion property of
the self-excited cavitating jet. The mass loss of the eroded specimen is
obtained to discuss the cavitation intensity of the SECJ, the surface
appearance is measured to identify different erosion patterns. The ex-
perimental setup is described in Section 2; the experimental results and
discussion are provided in Section 3; and main conclusions are sum-
marized in Section 4.
2. Experimental setup
Schematic of the experimental setup for jet performance investiga-
tion is shown in Fig. 1a. The test rig mainly consists of a reservoir, a
plunger pump of 60 MPa capacity which is used to produce pressured
water, a test tank which is filled with water to imitate underwater
working condition, etc. A nozzle and the test specimen are merged
underwater in the tank. The pressurized water passes through the
nozzle and ejects into the submerged condition. The cavitation bubbles
formed within the jet shear layer travel downstream along the flow and
Fig. 1. Experimental apparatus: (a) experimental test section, (b) organ-pipe nozzle.
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Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 282 (2020) 116668
Table 1
Nozzle dimensions.
Dt D L d L1/L2 θ
24 mm 9 mm 24 mm 2 mm 0.25 23°
finally collapse implosively near the target. The erosion ability of the
cavitating jet is influenced by the hydrodynamic conditions including
the upstream pressure P1, which is regulated by adjusting the working
frequency of the plunger pump’s motor, and the confining pressure
P2,which is controlled by the relieve valve downstream the test tank.
Based on previous research (Yan et al., 2018), the upstream pressure is
fixed at 12 MPa and the maximum confining pressure is 1.8 MPa for the
SECJ to achieve strong oscillation. The temperature of the water is
maintained at the environmental temperature using a cooling unit.
An organ-pipe nozzle was used to generate the SECJ due to its
simple structure and strong erosion capability (Johnson et al., 1981).
The nozzle configuration is shown in Fig. 1b, and the nozzle dimensions
are listed in Table 1. The nozzle consists of two area contractions,
characterized by (Dt/D)2 and (D/d)2, and a resonant chamber with a
length of L and a diameter of D. The acoustic resonance is achieved
when a standing wave forms in the chamber, and the peak resonance
will occur when the jet oscillating frequency approaches the acoustic
natural frequency of the nozzle chamber. Another important feature of
the nozzle, which can enhance the jet oscillation, is the nozzle orifice,
including the straight length L1, the following slope length L2 and the
enlarge angle θ.
The cavitation number σ is defined by P1, P2 and the vapor pressure
of the test water Pv. In the case of a submerged water jet, Pv is much
smaller than P1, P2, thus, the cavitation number can be simplified as in
Eq. (1),
P2 − Pv P
σ= or σ = 2
P1 − P2 △P (1)
Where: ΔP is the pressure drop across the nozzle.
Therefore, the cavitation number can be controlled by adjusting the
upstream pressure and confining pressure. The cavitation number was
regulated from 0.05 to 0.15 in the experiment as the SECJ achieved
strong resonance in this range.
The standoff distance, s, is defined as the distance from the outlet of
the nozzle to the surface of the test specimen. As the cavitation intensity
is influenced by the standoff distance, the test was carried out with the
standoff distance varying from 4 mm to 27 mm. The uncertainties in the
experimental conditions were as follows: the upstream pressure
was ± 0.3 MPa, the confining pressure was ± 0.05 MPa and the
Y. Pan, et al. Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 282 (2020) 116668

Fig. 2. The mass loss as a function of standoff distance for various cavitation
numbers.
standoff distance was ± 0.1 mm.
The cavitation intensity of the cavitating jet was evaluated by
measuring the mass loss of the specimen, which was mounted perpen-
dicularly to the jet. The specimen is made of pure Aluminum (1070A),
which has a disc shape with a diameter of 40 mm. The mass loss was
obtained by weighting the specimen before and after each erosion test
with an electronic balance, of which the resolution is 0.1 mg. To assess
the reproducibility and error of the mass loss, three specimens were
exposed to cavitation for every investigated experimental condition.
The average value was used to eliminate the impact of casual factors to
make the results more reliable and the overall error can be kept within
3%. A roughness measuring instrument MarSurf M 300C with a re-
solution of 32 nm was used for surface profile measurements of the
eroded surface. And ZEISS EVO 18 with a resolution of 2 nm was
adopted for SEM investigations of the tested specimens.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. The cavitation intensity of the self-excited cavitating jet
Fig. 2 shows the mass loss as a function of standoff distance under
various cavitation numbers in the range of 0.05 ∼ 0.15. The specimens
were exposed to the cavitating jet for 300 s, which is within the ac-
celeration stage for the test specimen. The exposure time was chosen so
that the level of damage could be readily evaluated. Since greater mass
loss corresponds to higher cavitation intensity, the standoff distance to
achieve the maximum mass loss is regarded as the optimum standoff
distance. As shown in Fig. 2, the optimum standoff distance is strongly
related to the cavitation number. For the four cases with low values of
cavitation number, which are 0.05, 0.06, 0.08 and 0.11, it can be found
that as the dimensionless standoff distance s/d increases, two peaks of
mass loss can be obtained. The peak at smaller s/d value is named the
first peak and the other one at larger s/d value is called the second peak.
For the last two cases with high values of cavitation number, which are
0.13 and 0.15, as the s/d increases, there is only one mass loss peak,
which can be assumed as two peaks merging into one.
Corresponding standoff distance with peak values and the peak
mass loss for these cases are listed in Table 2. Since there are several
peaks for these cavitation numbers, the optimum standoff distance
varies under different conditions. For the cases with σ = 0.05 and σ =
0.06, the optimum standoff distances are both the second peak, which is
s/d = 9.5 and s/d = 8.5 respectively, and the erosion intensity is much
higher than that for other conditions with higher cavitation numbers.
As the cavitation number increases, the mass loss of the second peak has
a dramatic decline. For the cases with σ = 0.08 and σ = 0.11, the mass
loss of the first peak exceeds or nearly equals that of the second peak,
and the cavitation intensity of the water jet can only be enhanced in a
limited range of standoff distances. When the cavitation number in-
creases to 0.13, as those two peaks merge into one, the mass loss has a
slight rise. When the cavitation number increases further to 0.15, ca-
vitation erosion scarcely occurs, thus the mass loss declines obviously.
It can be seen that for all the cases, the standoff distance of the first
peak barely changes, even when the two peaks merge into one under
high confining pressure, the peak also occurs at s/d = 3.75 ∼ 4, while
the standoff distance corresponding to the second peak decreases
monotonously with increasing cavitation numbers. It was summarized
by Soyama (2015) that the first peak is formed due to small water mass
impacts and the second peak is a result of cavitation impacts. Note that
the cavitation numbers of the former studied cases were less than 0.05,
given the cavitation erosion of those cavitating jet hardly appeared for
larger cavitation numbers. While for a SECJ, the erosion intensity can
be enhanced effectively by the strong oscillation of the self-excitation
especially under high confining pressure (Yan et al., 2018). Thus for the
cases with σ = 0.08 and σ = 0.11, the cavitation intensity increases to a
second peak at s/d = 5 ∼ 6 due to the strong resonation of the water
jet.
The variation of different optimum standoff distances varying with
cavitation numbers for the investigated cases are plotted in Fig. 3. The
fitted curve and equation of the second peak is obtained and appears as
an exponential function, the fitting equation is shown below,
s
= 0.69σ − 0.88
d (2)
The optimum standoff distances are shorter than the data estimated
in other literature (Soyama, 2017), which is assumed to be attributed to
the special configuration of the nozzle orifice used in the present ex-
periments, where an angle θ exits at the outlet as shown in Fig. 1b,
because the optimum standoff distance for a nozzle with an exit angle
was smaller than that with a straight section (Soyama, 2013).
3.2. The erosion patterns of the self-excited cavitating jet
The erosion pattern is essential for understanding the erosion
property of the cavitating jet and further studying the erosion me-
chanism. When the jet hits the target, the cavitation bubbles generated

Table 2
The dimensionless standoff distance s/d and mass loss △m of each peak.
σ= σ= σ= σ= σ= σ=
0.05 0.06 0.08 0.11 0.13 0.15

s/d 1st peak 4 4 3.75 3.75 4 3.75

2nd peak 9.5 8.5 6 5.25
Mass loss △m 1st peak 15.2 12.4 18.3 11.1 17.4 8.8
Fig. 3. The variation of optimum standoff distances varying with cavitation
(mg) 2nd peak 35.5 21.6 12.7 11.8
numbers.

3
Y. Pan, et al.
Fig. 4. Macroscopic images of the specimens under different cavitation numbers and standoff distances: (a) the top row σ = 0.05, (b) the bottom row σ = 0.11.
in the vortices around the jet shear layer collapse at a certain distance
away from the jet center, thus ring-pattern erosion is mostly observed
as a typical erosion pattern of the cavitating jet (Fujisawa et al., 2017).
Selected photographs of the eroded specimens attacked by SECJ in the
experiments are shown in Fig. 4, the cavitation number is 0.05 and 0.11
for the top row and the bottom row, respectively. It can be seen that the
erosion occurs in a shape of annular ring on the disc specimen, noted
that there are more than one eroded ring resulting from a SECJ. As the
standoff distance increases, the distinction among different specimens
can be found out from perspectives of erosion degree and eroded area of
the surface.
Under the condition with σ = 0.05, when the dimensionless
standoff distance s/d is lower than 7.5, there are two erosion rings with
an undamaged zone existing between these two regions, and the outer
ring is found to be much dimmer than the inner ring. As the increase of
standoff distance, the inner ring keeps expanding and the outer ring
keeps shrinking. For conditions where s/d is larger than 7.5, these two
rings merge into one, and the center of the specimen is slightly eroded,
too. Similar results can be obtained when the cavitation number in-
creases to 0.06 and 0.08, and the variation of its erosion patterns will be
discussed later in Section 3.3.
For the bottom row with σ = 0.11, the erosion rings are much
smaller compared with the erosion area of the top row due to at-
tenuation of the cavitation intensity of the cavitating jet under high
confining pressure. As for the erosion pattern, when s/d is smaller than
4, similar to the cases with σ = 0.05, the two rings are merging into
one. As the increase of standoff distance, apart from the merging ring,
there appeared a new ring which is much smaller than the counterpart.
The new ring turns clearest at s/d = 5, and then it fades away until it
can hardly be recognized at s/d = 7.5. For larger standoff distance,
which is higher than 7.5, there is only one ring left with a quite weak
erosion effect. Similar results can be observed when the cavitation
number increased to 0.13. The variation of its erosion patterns will also
be discussed in Section 3.3.
Based on the macroscopic image technique, various erosion patterns
under different conditions can be observed. By comparing the variation
of the erosion rings, the erosion patterns can be classified into three
types. Three eroded specimens and corresponding surface profiles are
shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5a shows the erosion pattern induced by the SECJ at σ = 0.05
and s/d = 5. There are two ring regions for this pattern, which is
classified as pattern A. “ring1” represents the inner ring and “ring2”
represents the outer ring, which are plotted by the green solid line and
red dash line, respectively. These erosion rings show different degrees
of damage, which can be evaluated by the erosion area and depth of the
erosion. It is obvious that the depth of the inner ring is much deeper
than that of the outer ring, the radius of the eroded valley, represented
by “rv”, is also located in the center of the inner ring, which means the
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Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 282 (2020) 116668
mass loss of this pattern can be attributed mostly to this ring area.
Fig. 5b shows the erosion pattern induced by the jet at σ = 0.05 and s/d
= 9.5, which is classified as pattern B. The inner ring and the outer ring
merge into one ring. As shown in Fig. 2, at s/d = 9.5, the erosion in-
tensity achieves maximum, so the depth and the width of this erosion
ring are both higher than the inner ring mentioned in pattern A. Fig. 5c
shows the erosion pattern induced by the jet at σ = 0.11, s/d = 5, two
eroded valleys can be clearly observed in the surface profile. Different
from pattern A, the deeper erosion occurred in the large ring. Based on
the macroscopic images of the eroded specimen, the large ring is
formed by the merging of the initial two rings and is similar to the one
in pattern B. While the small ring is formed just in this case, and it
diminishes soon with the increasing of the standoff distance. Therefore,
the large ring can be classified as ring1 and the new ring is classified as
“ring3”.
Three erosion patterns proposed above are typical appearances
within a certain range of standoff distances, when the standoff distance
is relatively small, the eroded specimen shows as pattern A. With the
increase of standoff distance, the erosion pattern shifts to pattern B or
pattern C. The variation of different patterns will be discussed in
Section 3.3.
3.3. The variation of the erosion patterns
The variation of the eroded area varying with standoff distances is
illustrated in Fig. 6, and the different erosion rings on the specimen are
represented with areas of different colors.
For all the cases, it is clear that the eroded area appears as pattern A
when the standoff distance is relatively small. As the increase of
standoff distance, these two rings merge into one, indicating the end of
pattern A. The following pattern is generally pattern B, while when
cavitation numbers are 0.11 and 0.13, pattern C appears in a limited
range of s/d. As compared with Fig. 2, it is obvious that the erosion
patterns are closely related to the cavitation intensity and are re-
presentative features of according peak mass loss under different ca-
vitation numbers. Under conditions where there are two peaks, the
erosion pattern shows as pattern A when the mass loss achieves the first
peak and then reaches the first bottom. Within the following phase that
includes the second peak, the erosion pattern shows as pattern B or
pattern C. When cavitation number increases to 0.13 and 0.15, there
appeared just one peak, and the erosion shows as pattern C and pattern
B respectively, thus it is assumed that the merged peak has the similar
property with the second peak appeared under lower cavitation num-
bers. The relationship between the erosion patterns and the cavitation
intensity is essential for the application of the cavitating jet. Pattern A is
the typical pattern at small standoff distances and is characterized by
the large erosion area, which is practical for underwater cleaning.
Pattern B is much common at large standoff distances and features large
Y. Pan, et al.
Fig. 5. Different erosion patterns and corresponding cross-sectional surface profiles: (a) pattern A, σ = 0.05, s/d = 5, (b) pattern B, σ = 0.05, s/d = 9.5, (c) pattern C,
σ = 0.11, s/d = 5.
cavitation intensity, thus it can be used for material removal of uneven
surface.
The variation of the erosion patterns is depending on the cavitation
number significantly. As the cavitation number increases from 0.05 to
0.15, due to the decreasing length of potential core and cavitation in-
tensity of the cavitating jet, the effective dimensionless standoff dis-
tance reduces from 13.5 to 6 monotonically. The transition point from
pattern A to other patterns is related to the cavitation number, too. As
the cavitation number increases, the dimensionless standoff distance of
the transition point decreases from 7.25 to 2.5. The forward moving of
the transition point is probably attributed to the decrease of the jet
spreading angle with the increase of cavitation number. Also, for the
SECJ, as the shedding frequency increases with cavitation number, the
stream lifespan of the vortex reduces, thus the vortex merging and the
following process are closer to the nozzle orifice (Saito and Sato, 2006).
The variation of the erosion patterns indicates that the selection of the
standoff distance is of great importance for the specific application of
the water jet under different cavitation numbers. Within high confining
pressure area, the effective impinging distance shrinks dramatically,
thus the optimum standoff distance is important for the cavitating jet to
perform better erosion ability.
3.4. The microscopic characteristics of different erosion patterns
To investigate the microscopic characteristics of different erosion
patterns and clarify the type of damage in different erosion area on the
specimen, the tested specimens were submitted for SEM investigations.
The SEM images of different erosion patterns are shown in Figs. 7–9.
Fig. 7a shows the upper ring corner of pattern B to illustrate the
difference between undamaged and damaged areas. Fig. 7b shows the
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Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 282 (2020) 116668
detailed transition from plastic deformation to cavitation erosion at the
edge of the damaged zone. The results reveal that the surface is eroded
with pits, craters, and fatigue cracks, and the damage propagation
mainly localized in the ring-shaped area.
Fig. 8 shows three SEM images of different erosion spots in pattern
A. It can be found that there exist several types of damage throughout
the specimen simultaneously, such as globular hollows, craters, and
plastic deformation. As shown in Fig. 8a, within the inner ring, the
damages are mainly globular hollows, since the hollow achieves the
highest depth, the material loss achieves the most compared to other
area. As for the outer ring (Fig. 8c), the damages are mainly singular
pits due to the small extent of erosion. There also exists an undamaged
zone between the two erosion rings, and the surface is shown as plastic
deformation (Fig. 8b). Thus, the surface profile for the outer ring can
hardly be recognized. It indicates that the cavitation intensity of the
cavitating jet decays rapidly at a large distance away from the center.
The SEM images of different erosion spots in pattern C are shown in
Fig. 9. Fig. 9a and c have the similar type of damage, namely globular
hollows, except that the damages of the small ring are shallower than
that of the large ring. As shown in Fig. 9c, the diameter of the craters is
about 10 μm ∼ 100 μm. Large cavity holes are formed and the erosion
increases with cracks, fractures and materials loss. As shown in Fig. 9b,
small pits are formed during the plastic deformation phase, which in-
dicates the erosion in this area is the initial stage of cavitation damage.
These initial pits are produced by individual cavity collapse during the
incubation time. The adjacent pits combine and grow in depth, even-
tually resulting in a large erosion crater. Another characteristic feature
in Fig. 9b is the occurrence of wavy lines, which is a result of the shear
stresses induced by the collapse of cavities (Hutli et al., 2018).
From the SEM images, it can be concluded that the erosion is
Y. Pan, et al. Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 282 (2020) 116668

Fig. 6. The erosion pattern varying with standoff distances under different cavitation numbers: (a) σ = 0.05, (b) σ = 0.06, (c) σ = 0.08, (d) σ = 0.11, (e) σ = 0.13,
(f) σ = 0.15.

produced by ductile failure and fragmentation. The progressive surface
changes can be observed at the edge of the damaged parts. When the
damage is extended to a larger surface in an advanced erosion stage, the
cavitation starts to penetrate the material and the damage depth in-
creases. The damage types in those erosion rings have distinctive fea-
tures, thus the erosion patterns are quite different from each other.
The formation of pattern A induced by a SECJ is shown in Fig. 10.
Three distinct flow areas can be identified in the impinging jet con-
figuration, namely free jet area, impact area and wall jet area. In the
free jet area, the vortices grow rapidly in the shear layer. In the impact
area, the jet is influenced by the presence of the wall, and the flow field
contains a stagnation point, where the pressure achieves the highest
and the velocity becomes lateral velocity gradually. Then the jet turns
into wall jet area, where the flow runs parallel to the wall and a
boundary layer develops. As for pattern A, the formation of the inner
ring accord well with the erosion area obtained by Fujisawa et al.
(2019). When the jet approaches the specimen, a dense water layer is
formed on the specimen at the impingement center due to the high local
pressure around the stagnation point, which helps to protect the spe-
cimen from erosion. In the meantime, cavitation bubbles travel along
the streamline at the outside edge of the jet and collapse on the surface
with a certain radial distance from the stagnation point. As for the
formation of the outer ring, the pressure distribution of the wall plays a
key role in the bubble distribution and strength. After the collapse of

Fig. 7. SEM images of pattern B: (a) the upper right corner of the specimen, (b) the edge of the damaged parts. The sample corresponds to Fig. 5b, σ = 0.05, s/d =
9.5.

6
Y. Pan, et al. Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 282 (2020) 116668

Fig. 8. SEM images of pattern A: (a) the inner ring, (b) the undamaged zone between two erosion rings, (c) the outer ring. The sample corresponds to Fig. 5a, σ =
0.05, s/d = 5.

large cavitation clouds, there also exists a small quantity of bubbles

spreading further away from the inner erosion ring. After traveling a
certain distance, the pressure decreases inside the wall jet area, which
causes these bubbles to grow and collapse again with less intensity, so a
large shallow ring is formed. This is in coincidence with the results
obtained by Saito and Sato (2006) using a high-speed video camera,
that the cavitation bubble spreads toward the circumference of jet on
the plate after the impingement. The ring-shape cavitation cloud is
formed around the collapse of the former clouds and moves outward on
the plate.
According to the variation of the erosion patterns under different
cavitation numbers, it is obvious that the erosion pattern initially ap-
pears as pattern A for all the cases at a small standoff distance, and the
diameter of the outer ring keeps reducing with the increasing cavitation
number and standoff distance. As is mentioned above, the cavitation
cloud spreads further after impinging on the specimen. It is known that
the traveling velocity is related to the jet intensity, the standoff distance
and the fluid viscosity. Since the energy of the jet and the traveling
velocity of the bubbles are rapidly dissipated with an increase of
standoff distance and cavitation number, the outer ring keeps shifting Fig. 10. Schematic diagram of cavitating jet under submerged condition.
toward the center. Furthermore, with larger standoff distances, the jet
intensity drops dramatically and the remaining bubbles barely move discussed in detail. The cavitation intensity of the jet achieves several
outward, which leads to the formation of pattern B. The formation of peaks under different standoff distances as the cavitation number in-
the small erosion ring in pattern C is not known yet. It is possible to be creases from 0.05 to 0.15. The erosion patterns are directly related to
related to the strong oscillation of the self-excited water jet, which only the cavitation intensity, and three types of erosion patterns are dis-
appeared in a limited range of standoff distances when cavitation tinguished based on the distribution of several erosion rings on the
number are 0.11 and 0.13, and is also the ideal condition for the jet to specimen as standoff distance increases from 4 mm to 27 mm.
achieve strong acoustic oscillation. The detailed mechanism needs to be The cavitation intensity of the jet decreases as cavitation number
further investigated. grows, for small cavitation numbers, there exist two optimal standoff
distances where peaks of mass loss can be achieved. While as cavitation
4. Conclusions number increases, the standoff distance corresponding to the second
peak decreases monotonously, the range of the effective impinging
The erosion property of a self-excited cavitating jet (SECJ) produced distance shrinks dramatically and there only left one optimal standoff
by an organ-pipe nozzle is investigated experimentally in this paper. distance.
The erosion effect under submerged condition is mainly caused by ca- The erosion patterns contain several erosion rings which are pro-
vitation, and the cavitation intensity and the erosion pattern are duced by cavitation. The main erosion ring, formed by the first collapse

Fig. 9. SEM images of pattern C: (a) the small ring, (b) the area between two erosion rings, (c) the large ring. The sample correspond to Fig. 5c, σ = 0.11, s/d = 5.

7
Y. Pan, et al.
of the cavity cloud, contributes to the greatest mass loss and the da-
mages are mainly globular hollows. A large shallow ring outside and an
extra small ring inside the main erosion ring appeared in different range
of standoff distances are produced by the following collapse of residual
cavities, and the damages are singular pits or shallower hollows. As the
typical pattern for the first peak of mass loss, pattern A, with the large
erosion ring apart from the main erosion area, appears at small standoff
distances and is characterized by the largest erosion area among all the
patterns. In the range of the second peak, the erosion pattern shows as
pattern B or pattern C. Pattern B with only the main erosion ring is
featured by the highest cavitation intensity and is much common as
standoff distance increases, while pattern C with an extra small erosion
ring only appears for a small range of standoff distances and cavitation
numbers.
The variation of the cavitating intensity and erosion patterns in-
dicates that the selection of the standoff distance is of great importance
for the specific application of the SECJ. Large erosion area formed
under small standoff distances enables the SECJ to be useful for surface
hardening, while deep erosion depth formed under large standoff dis-
tances makes the cavitating jet more appropriate for material removal
or other fields that need high erosion intensity. Within high confining
pressure area, the effective impinging distance shrinks dramatically,
thus the optimum standoff distance is important for the SECJ to perform
better peening effect and erosion ability.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yan Pan: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - original draft.
Fei Ma: Supervision. Boshen Liu: Writing - review & editing. Tengfei
Cai: Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 51774019), the National Key Research
and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFC0810500), and
the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No.
FRF-TP-18-056A1).
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