Mechanical erosion wear, induced by multiple wall collisions of sand particles, is predicted in long straight pipes used for crude oil transportation. The work investigates the effects of varying particle loading, flow rate and pipe diameter in the induced erosion wear. The Eulerian-Lagrangian code 2-PHASE - developed at the NTUA is used to predict the fluid and particle velocities and calculate the resulting mass removal rate. The accuracy of the code is first validated in a sudden expansion and a wafer choke geometry. The results show that erosion wear in tong pipes is very significant at the entrance of the flow, with peak values occurring for a length of approximately twenty-five pipe diameters. The rate of erosion depends mainly on the crude flow rate.
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