An analytical and experimental investigation of the trajectories of particles entrained by the gas flow in nozzles

Abstract

Among the parameters which determine the erosion damage sustained by the walls of a nozzle in which a mixture of gas and particles is flowing, is the angle between the direction of the particle flow and the wall surface at the moment of impact. In this work an approximate analytical solution is made for a number of gas particle flows to determine broadly the features on which particle trajectory depends and some experimental results are given which confirm the theoretical computations. It is shown that the divergent region of a conical nozzle is unlikely to suffer a severe particle attack but that for parallel flow convergent-divergent nozzles the convex region near the exit may be affected. The choke, on the other hand, is most susceptible to particle attack even by fairly small particles. It may be said, in general, that any particle which enters the choke section with a velocity which, in the absence of effects from the gas would allow the particle to strike the choke wall, will in fact hit the wall at some point along the length of the choke.