Flow-induced erosion modelling of cohesive material with coupled CFD-DEM approach

Abstract

Erosion is one of the continuous wear mechanisms in cohesive materials caused by the shear stress applied by the fluid flow at the liquid–solid interface. The erosion resistance of cohesive materials is significantly influenced by the strength of the cohesive bonds that hold the particles together, increasing the complexity of the mechanism. The erosion rate of cohesive materials depends on the critical shear stress (CSS) and the erodibility coefficient at the surface. The current understanding of the relationship among the inter-particle bond strength, CSS, erodibility coefficient, and their respective contributions to the flow-induced erosion process is still lacking; therefore, it cannot be adequately described mathematically. The present research offers a coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD)–discrete element method (DEM) approach to visualize and quantitatively analyze the flow-induced erosion in cohesive materials. The capability and accuracy of the developed model were validated using experimental data available in the literature. A cohesion model was then employed to describe the strength of the cohesive bond, and the effects of the cohesion energy density (CED) on the CSS and erodibility coefficient were investigated. The analysis indicated that for cohesive materials, the non-dimensional CSS not only is affected by the particle Reynolds number but also strongly depends on CED. The simulation results indicated that by increasing the CED value from 500 to 900kJ/m3, the CSS increased by 25 %, and the erodibility coefficient decreased by 62 %. The proposed CFD–DEM approach can effectively estimate the erosion initiation and erosion rate of cohesive materials in different applications and geometries.