The Rayleigh-Plesset equation: a simple and powerful tool to understand various aspects of cavitation

This chapter is a general introduction to cavitation. Various features of cavitating flows are analyzed on the basis of the Rayleigh-Plesset equation. They concern not only the simple configuration of a single spherical bubble but also complex cavitating flows as those observed in cavitating turbopumps. Scaling rules, erosive potential, thermodynamic effect, supercavitation, traveling bubble cavitation, cavitation modeling are some of the topics addressed here. They are examined through this simple, basic equation which proves to be a quite useful tool for a first approach of real cavitation problems