NEW METHODOLOGIES FOR ASSESSING CAVITATION LOAD AND RESISTANCE OF STRUCTURAL MATERIALS AND PROTECTIVE COATINGS IN NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY. PART II. POLYFRACTIONAL APPROACH

A fractional approach to cavitation erosion process as proposed previously by one of the authors is explained. The polyfractional erosion process is considered as a superposition of a series of monofractional ones and described by a differential kinetic equation with a set of parameters constituting “the erosion resistance matrix”. The funda-mental methodological considerations are supplemented by describing the most typical applications including pre-diction of erosion of structural materials under given cavitation load, derivation of cavitation erosion fatigue charac-teristics, retrieval of effective erosive load basing on performance of reference materials. Finally, extending the methodology onto thin and thick protective coatings is proposed.