Investigation of rain erosion on a brittle material by means of numerical simulation

Abstract

In this work, the resistance and deformation characteristics of a brittle material against rain erosion are examined by using the non-linear, explicit software LS-DYNA. The water jet with varying speeds impinges at 90° on silica float glass plates with different thicknesses. In the simulations, the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian method is used for modelling of the water. In order to analyse the deformations on the brittle material Johnson–Holmquist–Ceramics (JH-2) is used as the material model. Minimum plate thickness (for constant water jet speed) and maximum water speed (for constant plate thickness), which do not cause any damage to the target, are determined depending on the geometry, boundary conditions and assumed failure strain value for erosion. The results are compared with the water-hammer pressure.