Threshold fracture energy in solid particle erosion

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the shape of rigid particles affects the energy needed to cause surface fracture during erosion, using impact theory and fracture criteria to identify critical shape parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a model combining impact theory and fracture criteria to analyze the influence of particle shape on erosion threshold energy.

Findings

Existence of a critical particle shape parameter value.

Fracture energy has a nonzero minimum below this critical shape.

The model predicts how shape influences erosion threshold.

Abstract

The effect of geometrical shape of eroding absolutely rigid particles on the threshold rate of failure has been studied. The Shtaerman-Kilchevsky theory of quasi-static blunt impact, which generalizes Hertz's classical impact theory, is used for modeling the frictionless contact interaction of an axially-symmetric particle with an elastic half-space. The incubation time fracture criterion is applied for predicting surface fracture. It is shown that there exist a critical value of the particle shape parameter such that for all its lower values the fracture energy possesses a nonzero minimal value.