Slurry pipe transport has directed the efforts of researchers for decades, not only for the practical impact of this problem, but also for the challenges in understanding and modelling the complex phenomena involved. The increase in computer power and the diffusion of multipurpose codes based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) have opened up the opportunity to gather information on slurry pipe flows at the local level, in contrast with the traditional approaches of simplified theoretical modelling which are mainly based on a macroscopic description of the flow. This review paper discusses the potential of CFD for simulating slurry pipe flows. A comprehensive description of the modelling methods will be presented, followed by an overview of significant publications on the topic. However, the main focus will be the assessment of the potential and the challenges of the CFD approach, underlying the essential interplay between CFD simulations and experiments, discussing the main sources of uncertainty of CFD models, and evaluating existing models based on their interpretative or predictive capacity. This work aims at providing a solid ground for students, academics, and professional engineers dealing with slurry pipe transport, but it will also provide a methodological approach that goes beyond the specific application.

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The toroid wear tester (TWT) is a lab‐scale device used for the assessment of slurry erosion in pipelines. Historically, its application has been limited to the relative ranking of material performance under different slurry flow conditions; however, recent studies have indicated that TWT tests could be predictive and directly applied to slurry pipeline design—provided that the flow inside a TWT is better characterized. In the present study, air‐liquid multiphase flow inside the TWT was investigated. Torque measurements were taken to characterize friction loss for different air‐liquid combinations. A visualization experiment was also conducted to evaluate flow patterns within the TWT. In the experiment, the displacements of spherical glass beads were used to estimate velocity vector fields for different TWT rotational speeds. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was also conducted to complement the experimental measurements. A 3D transient analysis using the volume of fluid (VOF) approach was used to model the system. The simulation results agreed closely with the experimental findings. Furthermore, the simulations revealed that strong secondary flows (back flow, rotation) exist in the TWT. These type of flows do not occur in horizontal pipelines. Therefore, to use the TWT as a tool for slurry pipeline wear assessment, the differences in the flow field between the two systems must be properly quantified.