Effects of different characteristics of the dilute liquid-solid flow on the erosion in a 90° bend

A numerical model with a home-made interface code combining Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Discrete Element Method (DEM) is built to simulate the erosion process in a 90° bend for transporting dilute liquid-solid flow. Different characteristics of flow and particle are defined in the code for analyzing the corresponding effects on the bend erosion. The simulated results indicate the bend erosion is continuously increased as the mass loading of particles is increased to 10% in volume fraction. Both the pressure gradient force and virtual mass force reduce the erosion along the bend extrados because they drive the particles toward the bend intrados and reduce the frequency of particle-wall collision. The effect of particle-turbulence interaction is minor for coarse particles regardless of the particle concentration. The sharper particle causes less erosion at given particle volume and concentration, because the impact angle and particle-wall collisions for the shaper particles are reduced.