Numerical Study on Water Droplet Erosion Inhibition Mechanism of 17-4PH Blade Material under Submillimeter Groove Array Structure

DI Juan; XU Jin; JI Jun; FENG Xingzhuo; ZHAO Hanzhe; WANG Jianfeng; PENG Chaoyi

doi:10.16490/j.cnki.issn.1001-3660.2026.14.010

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Surface Technology ›› 2026, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (14) : 115-123. DOI: 10.16490/j.cnki.issn.1001-3660.2026.14.010

Numerical Study on Water Droplet Erosion Inhibition Mechanism of 17-4PH Blade Material under Submillimeter Groove Array Structure

DI Juan¹, XU Jin¹, JI Jun¹, FENG Xingzhuo², ZHAO Hanzhe², WANG Jianfeng³, PENG Chaoyi^2,*

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Abstract

In order to explore the influence of size parameters of the submillimeter groove array structure on the water droplet erosion resistance of the blade material, the structural parameters were optimized to improve the water droplet erosion resistance of the steam turbine blade material. The coupling algorithm of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and the finite element method (FEM) was adopted to overcome the large mesh deformation. The simulation was carried out based on ANSYS/LS-DYNA nonlinear explicit dynamics software. Models of 17-4PH martensitic substrate were established, including a smooth surface and a series of groove array structures with different widths (L) and spacings (W). The reliability of the model was verified by simulating the water jet impact on a rigid plane. The initial impact pressure was 1.907 GPa, and the error was only 2.77% compared with the theoretical value of water hammer pressure 1.854 GPa, which showed that the numerical model had high accuracy and reliability. The results show that under a fixed groove spacing (W), the cumulative mass loss of materials decreases monotonously with the increase of the groove width (L). Under a fixed groove width (L), the cumulative mass loss increases first and then decreases with the increase of the groove spacing (W). Compared with the smooth surface, the reasonably designed groove array structure shows a significant anti-water droplet erosion effect. When the width-to-spacing ratio L/W is 4 or 2 and the groove spacing W does not exceed 200 μm, the anti-water droplet erosion effect of the groove structure is significant, and the cumulative mass loss of the blade material is reduced by about 13.1% on average compared with the smooth sample. In addition, the average impact pressure of the three representative groove structures (L=400 μm, W=100 μm; L=800 μm, W=200 μm; L=200 μm, W=100 μm) is about 10.5% lower than that of the smooth structure, and the cumulative mass loss of water droplet erosion is lower than that of the smooth surface. Among them, the sample with L=400 μm and W=100 μm has the lowest average impact pressure (about 1.2 GPa) and the smallest cumulative mass loss (31.7 μg) after 2.3 μs of water jet impact, thus exhibiting the optimal water droplet erosion resistance. Conversely, the protective effect is significantly weakened for samples with L/W = 0.25, 0.5, and 1, for which the mass loss approaches or even exceeds that of the smooth sample. The design of a submillimeter groove array structure with reasonable parameters on the surface of the turbine blade can effectively reduce the impact pressure of the water jet and the cumulative mass loss of the material, thereby improving the water droplet erosion resistance. The findings provide theoretical guidance and basic data for revealing the influence of groove size parameters on water droplet erosion damage and optimizing material surface structure design to improve the erosion resistance of blade materials, which is helpful to ensure the long-term stable operation of equipment.

Key words

steam turbine blade / SPH-FEM / groove array structure / numerical simulation / cumulative mass loss

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DI Juan, XU Jin, JI Jun, FENG Xingzhuo, ZHAO Hanzhe, WANG Jianfeng, PENG Chaoyi. Numerical Study on Water Droplet Erosion Inhibition Mechanism of 17-4PH Blade Material under Submillimeter Groove Array Structure[J]. Surface Technology. 2026, 55(14): 115-123

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