Erosion Evaluation of First and Second Elbow in Liquid-Dominated Multiphase Flows

Elbows in series are widely used in several industries to change the flow orientation. Moreover, oil and gas industries have an additional problem resulting from the production of gas and oil: sand production. The sand can cause erosion damage and failure of pipelines, especially elbows. As a result, although it costs money and time for industries, environmental problems can occur. In addition, there is a gap in the literature regarding erosion in elbows in series and with liquid-dominated flows, both numerically and experimentally. However, E/CRC (Erosion/Corrosion Research Center) has developed a software called SPPS (Sand Production Pipe Saver), which engineers can use to predict erosion. Nonetheless, all the erosion data used for developing the software were gas-dominated flows, and there are applications, for example, in deep-water subsea flowlines where we may have liquid-dominated flows. Thereby, the objective of this work is to collect erosion data for the first and second elbows in liquid-dominated flows, create a database of erosion in two inches diameter bends with various operational conditions, erosion investigation of the second elbow, and flow visualization with an acrylic box and to determine the maximum erosion location in second elbows.