Abstract
Introduction. In gas industry, predicting sand erosion damage of pipelines by sand particles is a difficult task because this process is strongly influenced by many factors. Particulate matter carried away by the multiphase product during production can seriously compromise the integrity of fluid handling structures such as pipelines and elbows.
 Materials and methods. A three-dimensional numerical modelling approach in three-phase gas – liquid – solid flows was used to analyze erosion processes in pipe elbows. A key advantage of using CFD is that it can provide a wealth of information such as the effect of various parameters on erosion, maximum erosion rate, and erosion-prone areas. A variation of the Euler method for multiphase fluids was used to simulate three-dimensional unsteady gas-water annular flows with the presence of sand particles.
 Results. The results showed that a vertical pipe with two elbows is more prone to erosion at the second elbow than atthe first elbow. However, in a horizontal pipe with two elbows, it can be concluded that the first elbow is more proneto erosion. On the other hand, erosion at L/D = 0 showed the maximum erosion rate among all the geometries studied.
 Conclusions. In a vertical pipe, the second elbow of the pipeline is more susceptible to erosion. In addition, the erosion rate at the second elbow of vertical and horizontal pipes is the same for all studied geometries. The pipeline with L/D = 10 showed the optimal layout choice for vertical and horizontal pipe with an average erosion rate of 57.9 mm/year, which representsthe lowest erosion rate among the options studied.
Published Version
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