Serious damage may occur to concrete hydraulic structures, such as water galleries, spillways, and stilling basins, due to the abrasive erosion caused by the presence of solid particles in the flow. This underlines the importance of being capable in providing characterization of the concrete from the point of view of its vulnerability to abrasive erosion, in order to improve the design of the structure and the material selection. Nevertheless, the existing apparatus for concrete abrasive erosion testing are either far from allowing realistic simulation of the actual environment in which this phenomenon occurs, or show a large degree of complexity and cost. An alternative method has been developed with the aid of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). CFD was first employed to verify the effectiveness of a new laboratory equipment. Afterwards, a parameter has been introduced which, by successful comparison against preliminary experiments, proved suitable to quantify the effect of the fluid dynamic conditions on the concrete abrasive erosion, thereby opening the way to CFD-based customization of the apparatus. In the future, the synergy of numerical and physical modelling will allow developing predictive models for concrete erosion, making it possible to reliably simulate real structures.
We have developed a multiphase flow code that has been applied to study the behavior of non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPL) in the subsurface. We describe model formulation, discretization, and use the model for numerical investigation of sensitivity of the NAPL plume with respect to capillary parameters of the soil. In this paper the soil is assumed to be spatially homogeneous. A 2-D reference problem has been chosen and has been recomputed repeatedly with modified parameters of the Brooks-Corey capillary pressure model. In this paper we present selected figures showing the resulting plumes as well as quantitative information regarding position of the center of mass of the plume and variances (spreads) of the plume in both axes. These data allow us to evaluate influence of the capillary pressure parameters on the plume morphology in a way that has already been used for characterization of the plume distribution in laboratory experiments. Results confirm the hypothesis that capillary pressure parameters are the key quantities that determine the fate of organic contaminants in the subsurface, and emphasize the significance of the residual NAPL saturation for correct modeling of the NAPL contamination.
The flow of a mixture of liquid and solid particles at medium and high volume fraction through an expansion in a rectangular duct is considered. In order to improve the modelling of the phenomenon with respect to a previous investigation (Messa and Malavasi, 2013), use is made of a two-fluid model specifically derived for dense flows that we developed and implemented in the PHOENICS code via user-defined subroutines. Due to the lack of experimental data, the two-fluid model was validated in the horizontal pipe case, reporting good agreement with measurements from different authors for fully-suspended flows. A 3D system is simulated in order to account for the effect of side walls. A wider range of the parameters characterizing the mixture (particle size, particle density, and delivered solid volume fraction) is considered. A parametric analysis is performed to investigate the role played by the key physical mechanisms on the development of the two-phase flow for different compositions of the mixture. The main focuses are the distribution of the particles in the system and the pressure recovery.
Principles of gamma-ray-based measurement are summarized and their application is demonstrated on an operation of the radiometric facility installed in the test loop for slurry flows at the Institute of Hydrodynamics. The facility is able to measure vertical profiles of chord-averaged concentrations and concentration maps in the pipe cross section. A methodology of measurement is proposed including detection and quantification of random and systematic errors. Experimental results are discussed in the light of the proposed methodology. Experimentally determined vertical profiles of concentration are presented for slurry flows of four different fractions of glass beads. The tomographic application of the radiometric device is demonstrated on a measured concentration map and a suitable image reconstruction method is tested. High reliability of measured concentration distributions is proved except for regions near the pipe wall. The radiometric method is shown to be a useful tool for measurement of concentration distribution in slurry flow through a pipe.
The flow of a solid-water mixture through an upward-facing step in a channel is numerically investigated. The effect of expansion ratio, mean solids volume fraction and particle diameter on the velocity field, pressure distribution and solid volume fraction field is studied. Expansion ratios of 0.50 and 0.67, particle diameter of 125 µm and 440 µm and mean solid volume fraction between 0.05 and 0.20 are considered. Particle density is 2465 kg m-3 . An Eulerian twofluid model is used to simulate the flow. Due to the lack of experimental data, the model was validated by comparison to other numerical investigations and to experimental data about the horizontal pipe case. Afterwards, it is studied the effect of the above mentioned parameters upon the degree of coupling between the phases and the extension of the disturbance region in the pressure and solid volume fraction fields downstream the step. Parameters of engineering interest, such as the reattachment length and the pressure recovery downstream the enlargement, are investigated.