Cavitation of liquids under dynamic stressing by pulses of tension

This paper addresses discrepancies between the results of different measurements of the effective tensile strength (Fc) of liquids, in experiments in which a pulse of tension (or `negative pressure') is created by the reflection of a pressure pulse at a suitable boundary. We show that a key feature of the pressure records previously reported in such experiments may have been misinterpreted. The first complete account of such pressure records reported here offers an explanation for the order-of-magnitude discrepancies in Fc which arise in work involving instruments such as the `Bullet-Piston' (B-P) pulse-reflection apparatus (Temperley H N V and Trevena D H 1987 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 20 1080). We also report a new method of estimating Fc in a modified B-P apparatus and the results obtained indicate that samples of degassed, deionized water can sustain tensions which are an order-of-magnitude greater than previously reported in B-P work. Results are also reported for work involving samples of Newtonian silicone oils, for which the dependence of Fc on shear viscosity, µ, found in this work confirms that of an earlier study although the absolute values of Fc are found to be considerably greater than previously reported.