Explosive cavitation in superheated liquid argon

The kinetics of explosive boiling-up of liquid argon has been investigated at negative pressures created by the reflection of a compression pulse 3-5 mu s long from the free surface of a liquid by the method of liquid pulse heating on a thin platinum wire (with a rate of temperature increase of about 1 K/mu s). The limiting superheats T(*) (stretches p(*)), the effective nucleation rate J(*), and the derivative G(T)=(d ln J/dT)(T=T*) have been determined by experimental data on the thermal perturbation of a wire probe and the results of solution of the problem on the initial stage of explosive boiling-up of a liquid. The experimental data are compared with homogeneous nucleation theory. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.