A comprehensive CFD-based erosion prediction for sharp bend geometry with examination of grid effect

A comprehensive CFD-based erosion prediction procedure developed previously is applied to predict erosion in a 90 degrees sharp bend. This paper serves as a further validation of the proposed Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based erosion prediction procedure for a different geometry, flow and particle conditions to examine the generalization of this comprehensive CFD-based approach to other geometries. Special emphasis is played on the strong effects of the grids on the resulting erosion profile representation. Detailed meshing information is provided for repeatable and further improved CFD studies in future. In the process, erosion predictions for both large (256 mu m) and small particles (25 mu m) in a sharp bend geometry are performed by applying the comprehensive CFD-based erosion prediction procedure. Results are compared with data from the literature and are found to be in a good agreement with data which demonstrates the success of the applied CFD-based erosion prediction procedure. It is shown that appropriate meshing, selection of turbulence model and near wall modeling approach are crucial for obtaining good erosion prediction results utilizing CFD, especially for small particle erosion prediction under the present flow and geometry conditions.