Research on cavitation involved in ultrasonic-assisted abrasive waterjet machining

The cavitation characteristics involved in ultrasonic-assisted abrasive waterjet were analyzed in the present study. The fluid field corresponding to ultrasonic-assisted AWJ was investigated through utilizing computational fluid dynamics. A cavitation model was adopted to simulate the mass transfer between water liquid and vapor phases. The evolution of cavitation during the impacting process and the effects of vibration parameters on cavitating characteristics were investigated. Moreover, a set of experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of ultrasonic-induced cavitation on erosion and material removal of ceramics. The results indicated that the evolution of cavitation had dependency on the fluid pressure and turbulence at impacted zone, and the synergetic erosion of microjets and accelerated particles induced by collapsing cavitation bubbles can evidently enhance the material removal. The material removal rate was improved by 82% at most under ultrasonic vibration.