A CFD-based method for slurry erosion prediction

The numerical prediction of the impact erosion produced by slurries is particularly challenging from the modeling point of view, not only due to the complex interactions between the phases, but also because self-induced geometry changes can influence the course of the wear process. The usual methodology for impact erosion estimation, which is based on the Eulerian-Lagrangian description of the slurry flow followed by the application of a single-particle erosion model to each particle-wall impingement, may be able to reproduce the complex physics underlying slurry erosion only at the price of complex algorithms and heavy computation, which is unaffordable in practical applications. In order to overcome these difficulties, an alternative approach was proposed, which involved the steady-state simulation of the slurry flow by an Euler-Euler model followed by the repeated calculation of individual particle trajectories in the proximity of the solid walls and the continuous update of the wear profile. The improved accuracy obtained in the simulation of several abrasive jet impingement experiments reported in the literature make the application of this method to more complex flows very promising.