CFD Modeling and Experimental Observations of Changing Surface Profiles Caused by Solid-Particle Erosion

Traditional erosion modeling on oil and gas equipment frequently assumes a fixed erosion rate and unchanging surface profile throughout the erosion-exposure period. This approach does not account for the constantly changing surface and changes in the fluid flow, and therefore may lead to unquantified uncertainties in the prediction of equipment life. The literature presents limited experimental data of generic configurations in this topic. This paper addresses this gap by simultaneously investigating three generic configurations often encountered in oil and gas facilities. These configurations are a cylindrical rod, a hole in a flat plate, and a pipe cavity. Various eroded profiles of the physical configurations will be compared with traditional computational-fluiddynamics (CFD) modeling with an unchanging model surface. To validate this traditional assumption, the authors have used a modeling approach with multilayer paint modeling and geometry surface profiling of the aforementioned configurations exposed to a flow field with ambient air suspended with dilute solid particles.