Simulation of Erosion Wear in Slurry Pipe Line Using CFD

Abstract

Erosion is a serious problem faced in many industries that includes the transport of sand and water slurry in slurry pipe line. This paper emphasizes on the investigation of erosion on a mild steel straight pipe at different parameters including fluid velocity, particle size and concentration. The fluid velocity is selected in the range of 2.5-10 m/s using computational fluid dynamics code ANSYS-CFX. Sand particle within the size range of 100-400 µm size and concentration 5%-15% are used in this study. An Euler-Lagrange approach is used to solve the multiphase flow phenomenon. A horizontal pipe of diameter 100 mm and length 1 m (10 times of diameter) is considered for the study. The stochastic model of Sommerfeld will be used to account the wall roughness of pipe. It is also observed that the erosion wear in the pipeline strongly depends on fluid velocity, particle size and concentration.