Abstract
Cavitation erosion resistance is an important mechanical property required to high-speed hydrodynamic machine parts materials such as oil pump rotor. In this study, vibratory cavitation erosion test was conducted on rapidly solidified powder Al-Si base alloys to investigate relations between cavitation erosion resistance and their composition or microstructure. It is confirmed that powder forged Al-Si alloys containing large amount of transition metals such as Fe or Cr has as good resistance to cavitation erosion as that of Fe base sintered alloy especially when the powder has fine microstructure owing to high cooling rate of the powder production. The cause of the high resistance to cavitation erosion can be attributed to that the matrix was dispersion strengthened by large amount of fine dispersoids of aluminides of Fe, Cr and Si.
