Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

1998

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Kenneth H. Means.

Abstract

Materials are subjected to an erosion-corrosion environment in a wide range of applications today. Elevated temperatures promote the formation of oxide layers in jet engines. In fluidized bed boilers, the bed materials and piping of slurries and caustic materials cause erosion and corrosion. The process of erosion-corrosion may result in material loss and damage. Proper analytical modeling of the erosion-corrosion processes validated by experiments is needed to estimate the extent of damage in the material.;Empirical relations are available in the literature for predicting the amount of material loss due to erosion. These are obtained by conducting large number of experiments. But many restrictions apply in implementing these empirical relations. If the erosion process can be modeled analytically, in a very generic way, then they can be used to make a parametric study. The current work is focussed on developing a computational model for a metal-oxide system. A 3-D finite element model is developed using a commercial package and a transient dynamic analysis performed in order to predict the effects of erosion. Using suitable failure criteria, the amount of oxide lost in the metal-oxide system is predicted for various parameters like velocity, angle of attack, size of erodent, etc. The result of this study shows that volume loss for various angles of attack is that of typical brittle erosion. The volume loss has three different ranges with increase in velocity. And also two simultaneous adjacent impact results in volume loss as that of two isolated impacts.

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