A consideration on pipe-wall thinning mechanisms from an aspect of fluid-mechanics

Abstract

The contribution of the fluid mechanics to the piping wall thinning phenomena was investigated. It was shown that the fluid force to the wall was quite different between flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) and erosion. The turbulent mass transfer, which is one of the primary factors of FAC, was analogous to the turbulent heat transfer. The model that the molecular transport in the viscous sublayer nearby soon of wall was predominant was practicable. In addition, the mass transport was predicted using commercial codes of computational fluid dynamics. Some prediction results of the mass transfer in orifice and the elbow using above techniques were explained.