Numerical simulation of solid particle impacts on Al6061-T6 part I: Three-dimensional representation of angular particles

The damage to materials resulting from the impact of solid particles depends on their velocity, shape and size. In contrast to spherical particles, since granular particles typically are highly irregular in shape, they cannot be idealized by a single two dimensional geometry in numerical models of impact damage. In this work, a methodology was presented for generating realistic particle geometries based on measurements of the distribution of particle surface area, circular diameter, sphericity and thickness for a sample of 150 μm nominal diameter angular aluminum oxide powder. The methodology was used in a coupled smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH)/finite element (FE) model to simulate 124 non-overlapping particle impacts on an Al6061-T6 target, both at normal and oblique incidence. It was shown that the simulated particles produced distributions of crater and crater lip dimensions that agreed well with those measured from particle blasting experiments. A number of different material removal mechanisms were identified from the simulations, and discussed in the context of previously observed solid particle erosion mechanisms. The companion paper Takaffoli and Papini, in preparation utilizes the methodology to simulate solid particle erosion processes involving overlapping craters.