Numerical simulation of sand erosion phenomena in square-section 90 degree bend

Sand erosion is a phenomenon where solid particles impinging to a wall cause serious mechanical damages to the wall surface. It is well-known that the performance and lifetime of various machines, such as airplane, ship, gas turbine, pump and so on, are severely degraded due to sand erosion. This phenomenon is a typical gas particle two phase turbulent flow and a multi-physics problem where the flow field, particle trajectory and wall deformation interact with among others. However, the change of the flow field and the relating particle trajectory during the erosion process have not been taken into account by conventional simulations. This treatment is physically unrealistic. Hence, we have developed the numerical procedure for sand erosion phenomenon, including the temporal change of the flow field and the wall shape. In this work, we simulate sand erosion of 90 degree bend with a square cross-section. The bend erosion is typical target of sand erosion experiments and is useful for verification of numerical simulations. The numerical results are compared with experimental data, and it is confirmed that the developed code can capture the sand erosion phenomena reasonably.