Numerical modeling of sand particle erosion in return bends in gas-particle two-phase flow

In gas and oil industry, erosion damages to pipe lines bends and elbows due to the presence of sand particles have been a challenging issue. In this study a computational model approach was for evaluating the erosion rates in different vertical return bends including sharp bend, standard elbow, 180° pipe bend and long elbow. The airflow in the pipe was simulated using the SIMPLE method and the k-ω SST turbulence model. An Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was used for predicting particle trajectories and the corresponding erosion rates. Different particle sizes and mass flow rates were considered and Oka model for evaluating the erosion rate was used in these simulations. Under the same conditions, the simulation results indicated that the sharp return bends experience the highest erosion rates and the 180° bends experience the lowest erosion among the studied configurations. It was also found that the erosion rate is linearly proportional to the mass flow rate of particles for all cases studied.