CFD simulation and experimental analysis of erosion in a slurry tank test rig

Abstract

Abstract. Erosion occurring in equipment dealing with liquid-solid mixtures such as pipeline parts, slurry pumps, liquid-solid stirred reactors and slurry mixers in various industrial applications results in operational failure and economic costs. A slurry erosion tank test rig is designed and was built to investigate the erosion rates of materials and the influencing parameters such as flow velocity and turbulence, flow angle, solid particle concentration, particles size distribution, hardness and target material properties on the material loss and erosion profiles. In the present study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool is used to simulate the erosion rate of sample plates in the liquid-solid slurry mixture in a cylindrical tank. The predictions were made in a steady state and also transient manner, applying the flow at the room temperature and using water and sand as liquid and solid phases, respectively. The multiple reference frame method (MRF) is applied to simulate the flow behavior and liquid-solid interactions in the slurry tank test rig. The MRF method is used since it is less demanding than sliding mesh method (SM) and gives satisfactory results. The computational domain is divided into three regions: a rotational or MRF zone containing the mixer, a rotational zone (MRF) containing the erosion plates and a static zone (outer liquid zone). It is observed that changing the MRF zone diameter and height causes a very low impact on the results. The simulated results were obtained for two kinds of hard metals namely stainless steel and ST-50 under some various operating conditions and are found in good agreement with the experimental results.

Effect of Material Type, Impact Angle and Specimen Shape on Erosion Process

“…The next Figures (15), (16) are SEM photographs for which stainless steel 304 cylindrical specimens were tested up to 9 hours, and 18 hours respectively. The Figures shows that wear is increase with increase test time.…”

“…Bazanini et al ( 2008) [16] studied cavitation erosion wear of metallic specimens using the new compact rotating disk device The device consists of a water chamber in which a metallic disk rotates. On the disk surface are located the cavity inducers, that may be holes or protruding pins, and the specimens as well.…”

Investigation of the Effects of Erosion Test Parameters on the Particle Impengement Velocity by Using CFD Analysis

“…Li et al investigated the eect of stando distance on coating deposition characteristic (1225) through both the experiment and CFD simulation of particle acceleration aiming at the optimization of cold spray process [10]. Azimian et al examined experimental and CFD simulation of erosion wear of two hard metals in water-sand slurry mixture in a cylindrical tank tester and studying the dependence of erosion wear to inuencing parameters [11].…”