Modeling of Erosion Wear of Sand Water Slurry Flow through Pipe Bend using CFD

Abstract

In the present study, erosion wear of a 90o pipe bend has been investigated using the Computational fluid dynamics code FLUENT. Solid particles were tracked to evaluate the erosion rate along with k-ɛ turbulent model for continuous/fluid phase flow field. Spherical shaped sand particles of size 183 µm and 277 µm of density 2631 kg/m3 are injected from the inlet surface at velocity ranging from 0.5 to 8 ms-1 at two different concentrations. By considering the interaction between solid-liquid, effect of velocity, particle size and concentration were studied. Erosion wear was increased exponential with velocity, particles size and concentrations. Predicted results with CFD have revealed well in agreement with experimental results. The magnitude and location of maximum erosion wear were more severe in bend rather than the straight pipe.

Keywords

• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); Erosion wear; Discrete Phase Model (DPM); Pipe bend.