What causes cavitation on boats?
Revenge is a dish best served cold mate…. The deck drain thing just needs some nacelles grafted on – pretty straight forward. Cavitation is the introduction of air adjacent to a foil or other body moving through water. It can come from the surface – or in this case from low pressure zones caused by the movement of the prop blades through the water. The water will boil, just like in a kettle if the pressure is reduced far enough. The continuous exploding of gas into the water against the surface of the prop is very powerful, and erosion is severe and fast. The props may be turning too fast for their design, they may have turbulence issues or any number of things going on. Prop design is seriously complicated stuff – even the best designers in the world will admit that they are working in a very grey area of physics that confound the best super-computers in the world. The fact is that the actual way subsurface propellers work is only partly known – there are forums out there with some
