Simulation of Particle Trajectories and Erosion Through a Centrifugal Compressor

Abstract

Under particulate environments, turbocompressors suffer from erosion which is of serious concern to both manufacturers and users of these equipments. In this paper, the results of a numerical study of particle laden air flows through a radial compressor ‘Schwitzer’ are presented. Particle trajectories used an updated version of our in-house code based on a stochastic Lagrangian tracking approach, where equations of particle motion are solved separately from the air-stream. This latter considers the effects of turbulence on particles, initial locations of particles and random particle size and rebound. The tracking of particles in different computational cells and theirs corresponding impacts used the finite element method. The number of particles, their sizes and initial positions were specified according to a concentration profile and an AC coarse (0–200 micron) size distribution. The simulations results are depicting that the impeller rotating speed and particle size strongly affect the trajectories, locations of impacts and erosion rates. For a high rotational speed, erosion is spreading over the pressure side of the main blade and splitter. Regions of high erosion rates are seen on the blades leading edges and towards the upper corner at blade exit. However, the main blade is highly eroded than the splitter. The suction side is almost without erosion except near the leading edge. Furthermore, the casing is mainly affected over the inducer and along the tips of blades.