Oil produced from offshore reservoirs may contain sand particles. Sand particles in slurry flows impact pipeline walls and cause erosion damage. Therefore, predicting the erosion rate is very crucial to the oil industry. In order to gain a better understanding of the effect of sand concentration on erosion ratio, a series of submerged impinging jet tests was conducted. Total erosion ratio was calculated by measuring the weight loss. It was found that for 1 cP fluid viscosity, the erosion ratio decreases as sand loading increases, whereas for 15 and 20 cP fluid viscosities, erosion ratio remains approximately constant. This observation can be ascribed to more sand particle rebounds near the surface at higher concentrations, which can form a protective cloud reducing the number of particle impacts on the target surface. This effect may become less important for fluid flows with higher viscosities. Also, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed. It is found that unlike the conventional Eulerian - Lagrangian approach, Eulerian - Granular approach is capable of capturing the decrease in erosion ratio in higher sand loadings.
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