Cavitation is one of the most damaging things that can happen in your fluid power system. It’s a great way to shorten the life of your components, thanks to the relentless pitting it can exact on metal parts. While there are countless videos online that discuss cavitation, these six are our favorites …

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1. Cavitation in a water pump

While this demonstration doesn’t use high pressure oil hydraulics, it does a great job of explaining how cavitation occurs. Brilliantly, it uses an acrylic pump and acrylic piping, so you can really see what’s happening as the narrator closes the suction valve. As the vapor bubbles collapse and return to their liquid form, it sounds like there are rocks passing through the pipes—testament to the awful destruction that cavitation can impart on your system.