Modeling of liquid droplet impingement onto Ti-6Al-4V substrate

Abstract

Droplet impingement is of great interest to power generation and aerospace industries due to the accrued cost of maintenance in steam and gas turbines. The repetitive impacts of liquid droplets onto rotor blades, at high relative velocities, result in the blade erosion, which is known as Liquid Impingement Erosion (LIE). In this regard, it is crucial to understand the hydrodynamics of the impact in order to identify the consequent solid response before addressing the LIE problem. To that end, modeling the impact of liquid droplets onto the blade surface is the main objective of the present work. A novel model for Fluid-Solid Interaction is developed that couples the gas-liquid interfacial model with the structural solver using one-way and two-way coupling algorithms. Furthermore, the effect of the solid elasticity on the generated pressure build-up in the liquid and the resulting stress in the solid are investigated.