Investigation of solid particle erosion behaviour on erosion shield of a helicopter rotor blade

In this paper, solid particle erosion behaviors of AISI 1020 steel and Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy materials were experimentally and numerically investigated. Experiments and numerical simulations were carried out for the conditions of different particle impact velocities (100, 127, 170, 210, 250 m/s) and angles (20, 30, 45, 60, 90 degrees). Moreover, erosion performances on the erosion shield of a helicopter rotor blade of aforementioned materials were numerically determined for the condition of angle of attack of 0 degrees and impact velocity of 230 m/s. Numerical erosion analyzes were performed with ANSYS_Fluent 15.0 package program using discrete phase method with Eulerian-Lagrangian approach and an empirical erosion equation while experimental erosion tests were conducted by MIL-STD-3033 standard. As a result, numerical results were in good agreement with the experimental data, and it was obtained that erosion performance on the shield surface of AISI 1020 steel material is better than Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy material.