Multiscale Modelling of the Erosive Impact of Particles

Erosion is a phenomenon affecting many industries and there is a growing interest in modelling the erosive effect of particles. Effects include the erosion of the leading edge of wind turbine blades, and deterioration of oil and gas pipelines due to sand.
Industrial applications usually involve millions of particles. To model a large scale engineering application, we cannot directly calculate the fluid forces on each particle due to prohibitive computational cost. Therefore, we need to estimate the various fluid forces on the particle including drag and lift. Several models have been developed over the past several decades. However, these models are based on the analytical solution at very low Reynolds number around a free sphere which are then extended using experimental data to provide semi-empirical equations. To investigate the motion of particles near walls, we need to understand the effect of solid walls on the drag and lift forces. Furthermore, the compressibility effect becomes important as the particle gets closer to the wall.
In this project accurate numerical schemes will be used to discretise the compressible Navier-Stokes equation to numerically analyse the flow around a single particle in the near wall region. The high-fidelity simulations allow us to investigate various complex interactions between the sphere's wake and the wall and also the interactions between the boundary layers on the wall and sphere to understand how the drag and lift evolve near a solid wall. This project will build upon the available 2D simulations to extend the work to a full 3D model of a spherical particle close to a solid wall. The accuracy of the numerical scheme allows us to investigate the effects of varying Mach and Reynolds number and the gap size (distance to the wall) on the forces experienced by the particle with high precision.