DESENVOLVIMENTO DE UM APARATO EXPERIMENTAL PARA O ESTUDO DE EROSÃO CAUSADA POR MISTURA ÁGUA-SÓLIDO

In the present work the flow inside a mixing tank is numerically investigated in order to develop an experimental bench for the study of the erosion of a brittle material. The tank is equipped by a pitched blade turbine impeller which moves a mixture of water and solid particles around and causes the solids to impact against the erodible concrete base. Specific assumptions about the characteristics of the particles allow gathering information about their interactions with the tank bottom by means of a single-phase RANS model. After verifying the consistency of the solution, the numerical predictions were compared with experimental data from open literature. Afterwards, it is studied the effect of varying the impeller speed (within the range 400-900 rpm) and the distance between the impeller and the tank bottom (within 0.33 and 0.59 times the impeller diameter) upon the velocity field close to the bottom. A discussion about the influence of these parameters upon the wear of the bottom is finally provided.