CAVITATION STRENGTH OF LIQUIDS WITH LARGE MOLECULES

The cavitation strength of liquids has been studied at atmospheric pressure by applying tensile stress pulses of duration up to 3 mu s and amplitude up to 20 MPa within the temperature range from room temperature to the temperature of explosive boiling-up of the liquid. At high temperatures, where in absolute value the tensile strength does not exceed 1-2 times the critical pressure, agreement between classical nucleation theory and experiment is observed within the experimental error. With a decrease of the temperature the tensile strength of the liquid increases, but the experimental values of the breaking strength are lower than those predicted from theory. The dependence of the degree of discrepancy between theory and experiment on the number of atoms in the molecules of the liquids investigated is shown.