Abstract

Analysis of the cumulative cavitation erosion curves leads to the inkling that material destruction may be controlled by hardening ab initio, hence one can regards the process runs in hardening regime or may be determined by hardening processes only after some time from the beginning of the erosion, i.e., implying the process proceeds in fatigue dominant regime in the initial stages. Verification of material damage susceptibility on the variations of parameters referring to fatigue strength or material ability to mechanical hardening without changing other parameters is almost unfeasible. The method of resolving the cavitation erosion regime for given material has been proposed. The major role of fatigue strength and hydrogen diffusivity at normal temperature in the process was assumed. The scope of the work covers determining the auxiliary parameter values for selected erosion curves obtained under the ICET Programme and referring them to fatigue strength and hydrogen diffusivity of the materials employed, which led to constituting the classification predictor.