4. Conclusions
The erosion of a two-pass shell and tube heat exchanger was simulated by modelling the flow and particle motion with a physical model, where each individual tube was presented by a short tube plus a porous plug and a porous plate was used to adjust the backpressure in the rear head. This approach revealed more flow aspects affecting the erosion of the head and tubes of the heat exchanger, compared to the treating not including the modelling of flow in the rear head and the second pass. The model includes both the flow field in the development section of each tube and the deviation of flow rates through the tubes into the affecting parameters on erosion. The fluid flow was described with RANS and SST-k-ω turbulence models, while the sand particles in the shell and tube heat exchanger were investigated using the Lagrangian particle tracking method. The erosion was predicted for sand particles of 0.1 to 1000 m in diameter. It was found that the erosion caused by large particles was inconsistent with the flow pattern due to the separation of the particles having high inertia from the flow stream, when the flow direction changes, while the erosion due to small particles of less than 100 m can be represented by the flow characteristics, such as the flow direction and velocity magnitude.