EROSION OF OIL AND GAS-INDUSTRY CHOKE VALVES USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID-DYNAMICS AND EXPERIMENT

As part of several years research activity with erosion in chokes, Nor sk Hydro ASA has developed a model to estimate erosion and lifetime of chokes by incorporating erosion models into particulate flow models. This model has been verified with the results from flow and erosion te sting of two different types of chokes, Needle&Seat and External Sleev e. The erosion tests with both the modified Needle&Seat choke and the External Sleeve choke gave peak erosion rates only two or three times larger than calculated. This is assumed to be near the uncertainty of the erosion model alone. This is very satisfactory for such complex fl ow geometries. The model and the experiments demonstrated that the Ext ernal Sleeve choke is much more prone to erosion attack, at the given low pressure conditions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights res erved.