The facilities

In addition to the direct impact test facility, subject of a lesson in Week 4, another laboratory facility of the group is the E-LOOP, a pipe loop for erosion testing of pipeline components and hydraulic devices under low concentration (≈ 1% by volume) slurry conditions. The E-LOOP allows testing devices with size up to 4 inches, and it is equipped with a centrifugal pump capable in providing static pressure up to 30 bar and volume flow rate up to 160 m3/h. Instrumentation includes pressure transducers, an ultrasonic flow meter, a thermometer, and an isokinetic sampling probe.

As far as the computational facilities are concerned, the Ansys Fluent code equipped with User-Defined Functions is generally used for simulating the particle-laden flow through complex valve geometries. The particle-related output is then turned into an evaluation of the erosion risk through the E-CODE, a MATLAB library developed within the Fluid Lab group.