51316-7411-Predicting Erosion in Sudden Contraction and Expansion Geometries with Improved Near Wall Treatment

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Product Number: 51316-7411-SG

ISBN: 7411 2016 CP

Author: Jun Zhang

Publication Date: 2016

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In the oil and gas production the operating conditions can be erosive when sand is entrained in the fluid. Sudden contraction and expansion geometries are commonly found in wellbores. Erosion prediction for these geometries is a challenging task due to relatively small particles entrained and complex flow field containing regions of recirculation. Commercially available CFD codes provide a way to predict erosion for these geometries. This approach is able to predict the erosion trend but can severely over-predict the magnitude of erosion. Zhang et al. proposed a 2-D particle tracking method for predicting erosion for direct impingement and standard elbow geometries. With consideration of turbulence this method performs very well for these two geometries regardless of sand size. The present work extended and improved this 2-D method to sudden contractions and expansions by incorporating more physics into the particle tracking model especially for the near wall treatment. A two layer particle-turbulence interaction model is implemented. The turbulent core region applies a classical eddy interaction model while the near wall region uses a modified turbulence interaction model which considers turbulence anisotropy and viscous sublayer when particles are transported in the turbulent boundary layer. This paper shows its application in sudden contraction and expansion geometries. Results from a commercially available CFD code and the improved method are compared with experimental data. It is shown that for liquid/solid flows the improved method performs very well in predicting erosion for sudden contraction and expansion geometries.