Methodology

The simulation study of the erosion wear of a pipe was performed using ANSYS Fluent. The pipe spool
considered in this study is shown in Fig 1 and comprises two 90°bends and three 45°bends connected to
straight pipes.

Fig 1 Pipe spool

Meshing
A hexahedral mesh was employed with inflation layers generated near the wall to capture boundary layer
flow. The final mesh of the flow domain is made up of 535676 cells following a grid independence study.

Flow Model
Steady-state flow was analysed using the k- ɛ turbulence model and scalable wall functions. The particles
of size ### µm are represented using the Discrete Phase Model (DPM) with a particle injection rate of ###
kg/s in the direction normal to the pipe inlet face. The density and viscosity of the fluid is ### kg/m 3 and ###
Pa.s.

Boundary Conditions
A velocity of ### m/s was specified at the pipe inlet and 0 Pa gauge pressure boundary condition at the
outlet. For the pipe walls, a no-slip boundary condition was set.

Solution Method
The calculation is based on the standard pressure-velocity coupling scheme, second-order upwind
momentum scheme and first-order upwind turbulence terms. The convergence criteria was set to 10-3.

Erosion Modeling
To evaluate the erosion rate, the DNV erosion model outlined in DNV RP O501 Chapter 8 was created in
Fluent through a user defined function (UDF). The parameters to be specified include the particle impact
velocity, particle impact angle and mass of sand impacting on the target area.