Numerical Simulation of Liquid Droplet Impingement Erosion in Valve

A simple one-way prediction method for wall thinning due to liquid droplet impingement (LDI) inside a valve using a steady flow simulation and a steady particle tracking has been proposed. The validity of the method was examined in a real globe valve configuration. We have confirmed that the position with high wall thinning rate obtained by the proposed method corresponded to the perforated position in a real valve. The present simple one-way method is expected to predict the position with high wall thinning. However, the present method overestimated the peak value of the wall thinning rate. The input droplet diameter greatly affected the value of wall thinning rate. Therefore, it is important to correctly model the droplet diameter for quantitative prediction of wall thinning.