Numerical Analysis of Influence of Roughness of Material Surface on High-Speed Liquid Droplet Impingement

This study explains why the deep erosion pits are formed in liquid droplet impingement erosion even though the droplets uniformly impinge on the entire material surface. Liquid droplet impingement erosion occurs in fluid machinery on which droplets impinge at high speed. In the process of erosion, the material surface becomes completely roughened by erosion pits. In addition, most material surface is not completely smooth and has some degree of initial roughness from manufacturing and processing and so on. In this study, to consider the influence of the roughness on the material surface under droplet impingement, a numerical analysis of droplets impinging on the material surface with a single wedge and a single bump was conducted with changing offsets between the droplet impingement centers and the roughness centers on each a wedge bottom and a bump top. As results, two mechanisms are predicted from the present numerical results: the erosion rate accelerates and transitions from the incubation stage to the acceleration stage once roughness occurs on the material surface; the other is that deep erosion pits are formed even in the case of liquid droplets impinging uniformly on the entire material surface.