Abstract
Segments of welded small-bore A-106 carbon steel from a piping system that experienced severe flow-accelerated corrosion were characterized for surface damage due to flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC). A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was done to compare findings of CFD model versus observed surface FAC damage inside the pipes. CFD results expressed in terms of turbulence intensity showed good agreement with actual surface damage due to FAC. It was concluded that the presence of internal grooves would cause turbulent flow regime, and therefore, it would cause pipe material damage.
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Abbreviations
- \( {\text{AR}} \) :
-
Groove aspect ratio
- \( {\text{AR}}_{\text{damp}} \) :
-
Damp distance aspect ratio
- \( D \) :
-
Hydraulic diameter (m)
- \( d \) :
-
Groove depth (cm)
- \( I \) :
-
Groove length (cm)
- \( l^{*} \) :
-
Damp distance (cm)
- \( Re \) :
-
Reynolds number
- \( {\text{RF}} \) :
-
Refinement factor
- \( \Delta t \) :
-
Time step (s)
- \( U \) :
-
Mean velocity (m/s)
- \( u' \) :
-
Root-mean-square of the turbulent velocity fluctuations (m/s)
- \( u_{ \hbox{max} } \) :
-
Maximum velocity at the entire domain (m/s)
- \( V \) :
-
Free stream velocity (m/s)
- \( v^{*} \) :
-
Friction velocity (m/s)
- \( \Delta x \) :
-
Smallest length of the generated nodes (m)
- \( y^{ + } \) :
-
Dimensionless wall distance
- \( \rho \) :
-
Density (kg/m3)
- \( \mu \) :
-
Dynamic viscosity (Pa s)
- \( \tau_{\text{wall}} \) :
-
Wall shear stress (Pa)
- \( x \) :
-
Direction of x-axis
- \( y \) :
-
Direction of y-axis
- \( z \) :
-
Direction of z-axis
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Bagheri, A.H., Nasrazadani, S. & Bostanci, H. Impact of Internal Pipe Grooves on Flow-Accelerated Corrosion of Small-Bore A-106 Carbon Steel Pipes. J Fail. Anal. and Preven. 17, 417–425 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11668-017-0237-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11668-017-0237-z