Cavitation
is
sometimes at best is difficult to explain to laypeople, it has a life of its
own and to best describe it if you picture stirring a glass of water with a
spoon hard enough to make bubbles you have also created cavitation. When a
propeller cavitates it can be caused by excessive tip speed as props are
designed to be operated at a maximum RPM, the excessive tip speed (as some
describe it the water boils at the tips of the blades). Cavitation is also
caused by the blades being out of track with each other, i.e. leading &
trailing edges ,which need to be set with gauges during reconditioning. To
describe the effect of being out of track has, is the same as sticking your
hand out the window of your car at 50 MPH and tipping the angle of
your hand up and down, the force of the wind try's to move your hand in the
direction of the angle your holding it as ailerons effect the attitude of a
plane, likewise a blade out of track grabs hard water and causes the
propeller to want to yaw which in turn can cause shaft whip up in the shaft
ally. I will touch on other causes of shaft whip at another time.