Study on oxygen transport and titanium oxidation in coating cracks under parallel gas flow based on LBM modelling

Abstract

The oxygen transportation from surrounding air to coating cracks is an important factor in the oxidation and ignition of titanium alloy. In this work, the oxygen transport and surface oxidation of titanium in inclined cracks of coating under parallel airflow are studied with the lattice Boltzmann method. A boundary scheme of LBM about surface reaction is developed. The conversion factors are utilized to build the relationship between the physical scale and the lattice scale. The reliability of the LBM model is validated by the FEM method. The results show that the convective mass transport driven by the surrounding airflow and the vortex structure formed inside the crack are the two significant factors that influence the oxygen transport in cracks. The convective mass transfer plays a major role in oxygen transport when the inclination angle of the crack is small. For the cases with a large inclination angle, the oxygen transfer from the top to the bottom of the crack is mainly controlled by mass diffusion mechanism. The oxygen concentration in inclined cracks is generally less than that in vertical cracks, and oxidation and ignition of the substrate titanium might be more likely to occur in relatively vertical cracks.