Development of a slurry abrasion model using an Eulerian-Eulerian 'two-fluid' approach

The aim of the present study was to develop a numerical model that predicts the quantity and location of erosion damage in slurry systems susceptible to erosive wear. Unlike many forms of erosion which often need to be prevented, hydro-erosion is deliberately introduced during the manufacturing process of automotive diesel injector nozzles to smooth out imperfections in the spray-hole geometry. This model was integrated into a commercial CFD code, ANSYS CFX®, and took into account the change in geometry by dynamically updating the mesh to model the removal of material. A slurry jet erosion apparatus was developed to determine experimentally the parameters influencing the erosion process. Simplified planar geometries with four different angles of inclination were investigated and subject to typical hydro-erosive conditions similar to that used during the smoothing process of injector spray-hole geometries. In addition, the effect of slurry viscosity, particle size and concentration were studied. Results were used to calibrate the developed erosion model which showed encouraging trends in comparison with experimental studies for predicting the location and quantity of erosive wear.