Investigation of material wear formation on centrifugal fan impeller

This paper reports the investigation of wear formation on centrifugal fan impeller which was exposed to bagasse ash particles in the sugar process plant and to simulate what took place as particles impact on the impeller surface. Computational Fluid Dynamics has been used as a tool to simulate impaction of flow around the impeller to determine the impingement angles and velocity particles. After performing simulation using SolidWorks, angle of impingement was found to be low at the impeller inlet and gradually increase angle toward 90°, in reference to the blade root. The lowest angle found after simulation was 23°. This angle correlate with the theory mentioned for ductile material, stating that ductile material is susceptible to wear formation when the impact angle is between 15° and 45° with a peak at 25°. Computational Fluid Dynamics using SolidWorks has been verified by using a third-party company that worked on Creo 3.0 simulation. Research has revealed that material selection based on particles impingement angle, is key as when applied to centrifugal fans and related applications.