A numerical study of impact force caused by liquid droplet impingement onto a rigid wall

Liquid droplet impingement (LDI) erosion could be regarded to be one of the major causes of unexpected troubles occasionally occurred in the inner bent pipe surface. Evaluating the LDI erosion is an important topic of the thermal hydraulics and structural integrity in aging and life extension for nuclear power plants. One of the causes of LDI erosion is the impact pressure by the impingement of droplets in the involved steam. We investigated a simple droplet impingement to a rigid wall using volume of fluid (VOF) model, which is a two-phase Eulerian–Eulerian approach. The impact of a single water droplet with a high velocity towards a solid surface is examined numerically. The high Reynolds number value implies inertia dominated the phenomena and supports an inviscid approach to the problem. The high Weber number is justifying that an assumption to neglect the surface tension effect is adopted. We show that the compressibility of the liquid medium plays a dominant role in the evolution of the phenomenon. Both generation and propagation of shock waves are directly computed by solving the fluid dynamics continuity and momentum equations. In the simulation we employed a front tracking solution procedure, which is particularly suitable for two-phase free surface computation. The numerical results show that critical maximum pressure is not highest at the center of droplet contact on the surface at the first instantaneous moment but highest behind the contact angle later before jet eruption. It agrees generally well (within 20%) with the mathematical analysis. Finally, a droplet impact angle function is proposed for the global LDI erosion prediction.

► Applying a numerical approach to simulate the impact pressure caused by a high speed droplet impingement.
► Implementing a liquid equation of state and sound speed function for the liquid compressibility consideration.
► Proposing an impact angle function which can be employed in the overall erosion rate calculation for a bent pipe.