Avoiding cavitation and especially cavitation erosion are tasks, which have to be considered when working with hydraulics. State of the art is the assessment of the risk of erosion by component testing or to completely avoid cavitation by means of CFD. Another reliable method to assess the risk of cavitation erosion is until now not available. This paper deals with this problem and delivers comparative values for a later method development. In a first step the cavitation of a poppet valve, which controls a methanol flow, is visualized. The resulting three cavitation appearances are deeply examined. After that the results of long-term tests at different operation conditions are presented. A poppet surface analysis following each experiment has shown different types of surface attacks. As a result of this work it is shown that both cavitation appearance and surface attack are strongly influenced by the temperature dependent air solubility of the liquid.

Poppet valves are popular components of hydraulic systems, but they sometimes induce vibration in these systems. In particular, the vibration phenomenon of a poppet valve in a cavitation state is a troublesome problem in hydraulic systems, because the dynamic effects of cavitation on the poppet valve are difficult to predict. In this research, we investigated the vibration phenomenon of the poppet valve in the cavitation state in a visualization experiment and numerical simulation. We found in numerical simulation that it is possible to predict the tendency of the vibration by assuming that the bulk modulus of hydraulic oil is affected by the ratio of cavitation bubbles mixed in the oil. Additionally, we proposed a simple method of estimating the quantity of cavitation bubbles through visualization experiments and image processing. We then improved the prediction accuracy of the poppet valve behavior by applying the bubble mixing ratio obtained using the method in the numerical simulation model. The described methods not only avoid the sensor effect on the flow field but also save the additional measurement cost, and they are easy to apply to hydraulics systems.

Avoiding cavitation and especially cavitation erosion are tasks, which have to be considered when working with hydraulics. State of the art is the assessment of the risk of erosion by component testing or to completely avoid cavitation by means of CFD. Another reliable method to assess the risk of cavitation erosion is until now not available. This paper deals with this problem and delivers comparative values for a later method development. In a first step the cavitation of a poppet valve, which controls a methanol flow, is visualized. The resulting three cavitation appearances are deeply examined. After that the results of long-term tests at different operation conditions are presented. A poppet surface analysis following each experiment has shown different types of surface attacks. As a result of this work it is shown that both cavitation appearance and surface attack are strongly influenced by the temperature dependent air solubility of the liquid.