Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2020

Publication Title

COMSOL Conference 2020 North America

Pages

1-4

Conference Name

COMSOL Conference 2020 North America, 7-8 October 2020, Virtual, Online

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of particle-laden fluid flows through a 90-degree pipe elbow at Reynolds numbers 1,000 and 10,000 were completed; for different dimensionless elbow curvature ratios of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.5; and for particles with different Stokes numbers of 0.01, 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 5.0, and 10.0. There were two scenarios in the study. For the first, the particles felt drag from the primary (or the axial) flow as well as from the secondary fluid flows in the elbow. For the second, the secondary fluid flow in the 90-degree bend was suppressed from the particle drag, thus the particles only felt the flow in the axial direction of the flow. These simulation scenarios were made to analyze how suppressing the secondary flow could cause less erosion in the 90-degree bend of the pipe when compared to the particles feeling both the primary and secondary flows of the fluid. The results show that secondary flows do not affect much the erosion when the particle Stokes number is high (close to 10). On the other hand, when the Stokes number is less than one, a significant 20% to 50% reduction on the erosion is observed after secondary flows were removed.

Rights

© 2020 COMSOL, Inc. All rights reserved.

Included with the kind written permission of the copyright holder.

Original Publication Citation

Ayala, O., Rivera-Hernandez, G., & Knight, C. (2020). Computational fluid dynamics study of the effects of secondary flows in 90-degree pipe elbow erosion. COMSOL Conference 2020 North America, Virtual, Online.

ORCID

0000-0003-0604-8606 (Ayala)

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