Cavitation is a dangerous process which destroys objects in a fluid. Scientific description of this multifaceted phenomenon is based on almost every area of physics, and many interesting effects are connected with cavitation. The most intriguing of them is sonoluminescence – the light emitted from a cavitating fluid.

This book presents a full-scale description of cavitation: from the basic thermodynamic principles to special phenomena associated with this complex process, from the dynamics of a single gas cavity to the catastrophic macroscopic manifestations, from the domestic observations to the nuances of X-ray spectroscopic research.

All authors are from Thermophysics Department of Moscow Power Engineering Institute.

Dmitry A. Biryukov is the Assistant Professor. An experimenter. Extensive experience in designing experimental installations in various fields of science and technology. However, he finds experiments with cavitation the most interesting for himself. Experiments with cavitation are special: many nuances must be taken into account in order to obtain the effect and be able to observe it.

Denis N. Gerasimov is the Head of the Department. A theorist. For him, cavitation is an excellent example of a multidisciplinary phenomenon: there are no simple unexplained problems left to present day. Considering a natural effect requires extensive knowledge in different areas of physics and mathematics. Many items of Gerasimov’s CV turned out to be useful in the treatment of cavitation: from thermodynamics to plasma physics and nonlinear dynamics.

Eugeny I. Yurin is the Assistant Professor. A specialist in numerical simulations. His journey to the world of science began from a task of determining the boundary conditions for a collapsing bubble. Months of calculations led to notable results but did not reveal all the mysteries of a simple bubble in water. Cavitation and related processes seem so ordinary and understandable that they can be pictured easily in our mind, but, in fact, they are extremely complex.