With the advent of high-speed, high-ouput diesel engines, cavitation erosion of wet-cylinder liners is one of the most prevalent types of failure and a major problem confronting designers. It has been attributed to many mechanisms by various researchers in different countries. The present paper summarizes the authors' work, reviews published information on this problem, and discusses various contradictory findings. It has been found from vibratory cavitation tests that it is possible to produce conditions leading to erosion of the water-side of diesel engine cylinder liners. Photomicrographs from laboratory vibratory cavitation specimens and eroded liners from diesel engines in the field are compared. It is further confirmed that diesel engine liner erosion is usually due to cavitation erosion, caused, in most cases, by vibration of the liner wall.
Liner damage is only a special case of general cavitation damage. Thus, its study must be carried out together with a general study of cavitation damage. Damage to cylinder liners due to cavitation bubble collapse is the most severe consequence of cavitation. From the current study, it is concluded that only bubble collapse stresses are important to damage, even though very high accelerations are measured on both laboratory vibratory test specimens and cylinder liners in engines.
* Numbers in parentheses designate references at end paper.
Past work, with recent vibratory cavitation erosion tests in our laboratory provide important new information.