Predicting the material loss around a hole due to sand erosion

In the oil and gas and other process industries it is necessary to have accurate and versatile methods of determining surface erosion rates, and to use them to predict the erosion of surfaces over time. In this work a combined experimental and computational study has been performed to examine and predict the erosion characteristics on a simple flat aluminium plate, with a central hole, that is impacted with silica sand. Existing techniques were employed to generate very accurate experimental data for calibration of a computational erosion sub-model. This sub-model was then incorporated into a computational fluid dynamics environment to predict erosion on the flat plate. It was found that profile development on bluff surfaces could be predicted with accuracy generally much less than a nominal maximum deviation of 30%. Erosion of the more complex aspects of the geometry was only qualitatively predicted. The importance of allowing for the erosion incubation period in calculations is demonstrated, and methods for improving erosion prediction of complex geometries are discussed.