Preliminary Development of a Method for Impact Erosion Prediction in Pumps Running as Turbines

In this paper preliminary results of the numerical assessment of PAT erosion, caused by the impingement of solid particles in the water flow, are provided and discussed. A CFD model was developed by the Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II to investigate the fluid dynamics of a PAT and coupled with the in-house E-CODE developed by the Politecnico di Milano for wear estimation. The erosion simulations were performed to assess the wear of PAT components, namely inlet, impeller, volute and outlet pipe, for abrasive particles with different size, aiming at estimating the relation between the fluid dynamics of the slurry flow and the development of the erosion process.