Wind tunnel test study on the erosion wear of galvanized coatings on steel members under wind-blown-sand two-phase flow

Pieces of galvanized steel angle, steel tube, and steel plate were made into test specimens, and then a uniform wind-sand flow field was formed in a reflux wind tunnel to simulate the environment of strong wind-sand areas. Through the wind tunnel testing, the erosion wear laws of wind-blown-sand two-phase flow on these specimens coatings were studied under different erosion mechanical parameters (erosion duration, erosion angle, and wind speed), different specimen aspect ratios (long edge length of the steel plate / short edge length of the steel plate) λ ar and spacing (distance from center to center of the front and the rear steel tube) S . The results have shown that the erosion rate ( E ) of the galvanized coatings initially increases and then decreases as the erosion angle increases. A 19° wind direction to the longitudinal axis of specimens causes maximum erosion. The wind speed exponent of galvanized steel angle and steel plate erosion are 2.41 and 2.33, respectively. With increasing λ ar , E of the galvanized steel plate decreases. Based on the wind tunnel tests, calculation models of E for galvanized coatings under wind-sand action were proposed. Due to the inability to simulate large-scale wind field characteristics, the test data of E obtained by the airflow-sand jetting method were proven to exhibit overestimation. With increasing spacing of the steel tubes, the ratio of E between the rear and front steel tubes λ r f decreases and then increases, before decreasing and then increasing again, possibly due to changes in the flow field, vortex shedding, and interactions between the wake and the downstream tube.