Experimental evidence of nucleation from wall-bounded nuclei in a laminar flow

The importance of nucleation from wall-bounded nuclei for cavitation and especially cavitation inception is undisputed. Although various theories and models found their way to standard literature, there is a lack of experiments allowing a closer look onto the process of nucleation. In the present paper we present a new experimental set-up that allows the investigation and analysis of nucleation from wall-bounded nuclei. The experimental findings support an extended understanding of nucleation as a self excited cyclic process. Impressive high-speed visualisations can be found in the supplementary material.