The facilities

The erosion experiment is performed at our lab with a submerged impingement facility. The experimental system consists of a recirculation pump, control valve, testing tank, impingement nozzle and mixer. Before testing, the solution is prepared based on a weight concentration. After the solution is prepared, sand particles are added into the solution. The total testing time is 24 hours. But, the mass loss of the specimen in 3 hours and 6 hours are also measured and monitored to study erosion behavior for the non-Newtonian fluid. After the test is completed, the erosion profiles are obtained with a 3-D profilometer.
In addition, a large scale flow loop experiments was built to simulate the flow behavior in large scale fracturing work. The test section can be made with a different inner diameter and different flow geometry such as bend or sudden reducer pipe. The maximum slurry velocity can be up to 40 m/s and sand concentration can be up to 20% vol.

Furthermore, the Ansys Fluent code equipped with User-Defined Functions is generally used for simulating the particle-laden flow through tubing and other complex geometries.