Measurement and modelling of surface erosion in acoustic cavitation

The project deals with the modeling of acoustical waves, which produce cavitation bubbles in a fluid, and their interaction among each other. Acoustic cavitation is widely spread in process engineering (e.g. sonochemistry), e.g. for valuable metal recovery, where surface erosion by cavitation plays the decisive role. The methods currently used in numerical simulations are not capable of reproducing the complex mechanisms satisfactorily. The goal of the project is to give a better prediction of the propagation and the effect of acoustic cavitation using the combined approach of novel numerical techniques and modern measurement methods. The focus is on the development of a model for the prediction of surface erosion. The experimental part is conducted by the Third Institute of Physics at the Georg August University of Göttingen.