Understanding cavitation mass transfer at different scales*

Cavitation is the formation of vapor-filled cavities in a liquid due to local depressurization. While cavitation inception is a small-scale phenomenon which typically occurs at the micron scale, subsequent conversion from liquid to vapor phase causes the formation of large bubbles in the liquid.  Despite the abundance of mass transfer models that deal with cavitation, characterizing this mass transfer at different scales with no ad-hoc assumptions for inception has proven difficult. Here, we present and analyze a new model based on the Navier-Stokes-Korteweg equations which can predict cavitation inception at small scales and also quantify the mass transfer at larger scales accurately.