Photogrammetry based computational fluid dynamics of erosion of sand particles in water pipeline: Dynamic shape factors of 3D particles and minimization of erosion activity

Extraction and delivery of raw materials in engineering industries are inevitably polluted with sand particles that caused several flow assurance problems. Besides, designing a pipeline and estimating sand erosion is very complex in a multiphase flow due to several important factors needed to be considered, such as impact velocity, impact angle, size of particle, shape of particle, properties of particle, and properties of the target material. In this work, a modified E/CRC erosion model was developed to address the shape randomness in sand particles distribution. The photogrammetry technique was adopted to digitize sand particles into 3D models within the range of 400-500 mu m. After quantitative and qualitative analysis, a database of shape factor for different spherical and roundness of sand particles was tabulated. Meanwhile, a high-fidelity simulation of a 90-degree elbow pipeline was conducted using the CFD-DEM method. Hydrodynamic characteristics of liquid flow, sand particle trajectories, the sensitivity of velocity, shape factor, and flow rate were comprehensively explored. Modification of the particle shape factor based on the generated database from photogrammetry resulted in overestimated erosion rate of the original E/CRC model with 124.4% accuracy improvement in predicting erosion rate on pipe bend at different collision angles. Lastly, through response surface methodology (RSM), a flow threshold condition was established to achieve minimum erosion damage.

Automated summary

Extraction and delivery of raw materials in engineering industries are inevitably polluted with sand particles that caused several flow assurance problems. The study developed a modified erosion model to address the shape randomness in sand particles distribution and conducted high-fidelity simulation of sand particle trajectories in a pipeline bend using CFD-DEM method. Modification of the particle shape factor based on the generated database resulted in significantly improved accuracy in predicting erosion rate.