Particle breakage in sand blasting due to impact on ductile materials

Cleaning of rust, paint or removing burrs and many other such applications are done by several processes. Sand blasting is one of them, where a stream of sand particles is forcefully projected onto a surface, with compressed air or steam. These sand particles break up into very small pieces upon impact, which are inhaled by workers to cause silicosis. While much research has been done on the surface being impacted, very little research has been done on the particle itself. Hence, proper analytical modeling of the sand blasting process from the particle perspective, validated by experimental results, is required to predict the sand particle breakage.;In the present thesis, a finite element model of the sand particle is developed in LS-INGRID and a transient dynamic analysis is performed in LS-DYNA3D. This study focuses mainly on the propagation of stress waves and the volume loss of the sand particle upon impacting an aluminum plate. Three different shapes of the sand particle and five different sizes with varying impact angles and particle velocities were chosen to analyze the influence of impact. The results of the model showed close correlation with the experimental results of A. J. Sparks and I. M. Hutchings. These results were presented in the form of graphs of dependencies between volume loss and other parameters affecting the impact. It was concluded that 100mum size is the optimum size of the sand particle that increases the safety of the workers performing sandblasting due to its lesser volume loss.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Year dc:date.available

2004

Author dc:creator

• Bandaru, Ravi Kishore

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kenneth H. Means.

• Mechanical engineering
• Civil engineering

Identifier

https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/1481

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchrepository.wvu.edu:etd-2484