Graduation of Ines Ben M’hamed: The Strength of Clay in a Test Rig

Ines Ben M’hamed defending her graduation thesis
Ines Ben M’hamed defending her graduation thesis

Last week, Ines Ben M’hamed graduated with good grades on her bachelor thesis. She did a project with us at the Research Department of Damen Dredging Equipment in Nijkerk. The topic was to investigate the strengthening of clay when it is subjected to shear. This deformation is a common phenomenon when cutting clay and as such a contribution to my own PhD project1 and consequently improving our products for these applications. A common problem with clay is clogging up the cutter head, but it is also not completely understood why the clay is behaving as it does and how much power is involved for the various regimes.

Fully covered cutter head in sticky clay

The effects of deformation on the behaviour of clay are much more pronounced than e.g. sand or rock. Rock does not deform, it just breaks. Sand deforms, but as it basically only involves hydraulic and mechanical forces, it is much better understood. Clay particles have wider range of interactions. Next to the hydraulic and mechanical forces, they may experience: adhesion and cohesion, molecular forces, electrostatic charges and chemical bonding in the higher temperature ranges. The general effect is that as the particles in the original situation may have a weak structure, the external disturbance causes the particles to get jostled around and all the mentioned interaction get a chance to hook on to each other.

Shear strengthening due to organising particles
Shear strengthening due to organising particles

The result is, that the particles get oriented and therewith a better opportunity to bond. The effect is a strengthening of the shear stress. As this strengthening is dependent on the strain rate, it is this strain rate, that is of interest for the prediction of the cutting forces. There are many publications available on what the consequences are of the strain rate on the Specific Cutting Energy. A well known model is by Sape Miedema2.

Strain Rate Effect on the Specific Cutting Energy (Credit: SA Miedema)
Strain Rate Effect on the Specific Cutting Energy (Credit: SA Miedema)

The trick with this model is, it depends on this strain rate effect. The sole experimental data available is by Hatamura and Chijiwa3 in 1975. They tested one type of clay on the three governing parameters: static shear strength, dynamic shear strength and the strain rate. There hasn’t been hardly any further experimental investigation into this problem. And as we regularly receive samples and soil reports that we can not test on these properties, it is also hard to predict the performance of our cutter heads. So, we decided to build our own cutting test rig.

Design of Ines’ cutting test rig
Design of Ines’ cutting test rig

This cutting test rig resembles the specifications to the original test rig of Hatamura. This will allow us to verify the parameters in the model ourselves. We also prepared the design with various option to enable us to allow assessment of clay samples that we receive from clients and service engineers. We hope to provide our customers with additional service in this problem. Currently, the parts of the test rig arrived very late and Ines was not able to include the build in her project. Respect for the good grade she received for her thesis. However, the parts are there and provide and excellent opportunity for the next graduation student to do their project with our company. Who dares?

Available parts for the cutting test rig
Available parts for the cutting test rig

References

  1. Personal Announcement: Going Back To School To Cut Some Clay, Discover Dredging
  2. The Delft Sand Clay & Rock Cutting Model, SA Miedema
  3. Analysis Of the Mechanism of Soil : 1st Report. Cutting Patterns of Soils, Hatamura & Chijiwa

See also

 

Graduation Of Alex De Rooij: Pumps Actually Fly Like An Unusual Airplane

Alex de Rooij receiving flowers from Suman Sapkota for his graduation
Alex de Rooij receiving flowers from Suman Sapkota for his graduation

When you hire a carpenter, he repairs everything with a hammer. So, what happens when you ask an aeronautical student to solve some issues in a dredge pump? He models the pump as a badly behaving airplane. And with success, Alex de Rooij joined our company as a graduation student and recently graduated on the topic of ‘Numerical Study on NACA Profiles Sensitivity in Dredge Pump Impellers’.

The normal procedure for designing pumps is relatively straight forward. Set the performance specifications and try to hit that mark with the simulated behaviour from an iteratively improved design. This is well documented and I’ve been writing about this process before.1

Pump design workflow (inspired by Suman Sapkota)
Pump design workflow (inspired by Suman Sapkota)

One of the design parameters is the NPSHr. This is basically the amount of absolute pre-pressure the pump requires to operate.2 The system and operating conditions will result in a certain available pre-pressure: NPSHa. When the NPSHa drops below the NPSHr, the pump will experience cavitation at the low pressure side of the blade. The flow of the medium will be disturbed and the performance of the pump will abruptly crash. There is some warning. Operating near the NPSHr, there will be an incipient cavitation where the vapour bubbles start to form, but do not cause any issue. The imploding vapour bubbles may be detected audibly for the trained listener.3 Next will be a stage on the NPSHr, where the bubbles get larger and they loudly implode. At this stage, the pump sounds like it is tumbling nuts and bolts inside. These imploding bubbles will definitely cause damage to the impeller. At last, working below the NPSHr, the bubbles will become so large, they will block the passage between the blades. The result is an immediate drop in delivered head.

Explanation of NSPHr, NPSHa and cavitation
Explanation of NSPHr, NPSHa and cavitation

The flow of the medium through the impeller can be simulated in a CFD program. Specifically for impellers, you will need to model a rotating frame of reference. And that is the usual representation of the results. However, with mathematics being one of the most powerful tools invented by humanity, we can have an alternative view on these results. We can cut the impeller along a radial and stretch open the meridional passage and the blades to a row of foils. And that is exactly where our young aspiring engineer comes in. In literature, the blades in the impeller are modelled having a constant thickness. But, Alex has been investigating what the influence will be when we model the blades as foils. Selecting a proper profile makes the blade less sensitive to stalling.

Conversion of axial view to blade to blade view
Conversion of axial view to blade to blade view

Alex, thank you very much for your work here at Damen. We’ve learned the influence of certain profiles on the performance and geometry of the pumps. You have the right mindset to pass your time at the TU Delft and graduate successfully over there also. And whenever you have some days of the month left after you spend your allowance, know that we can give you a warm reception at our office.

Alex working at the reception desk at Damen Dredging Equipment
Alex working at the reception desk at Damen Dredging Equipment

References

  1. Our Interview About New Pump Designs In The Latest Damen Nieuws, Discover Dredging
  2. When does your pump suck? Discover Dredging
  3. Cavitation in a Water Pump and Valve, Mountain States Engineering and Controls

See also

Graduation Of Wim Kleermaker: Measuring And Predicting Wear In Impellers

Wim Kleermaker during the practical phase of his graduation in dredging
Wim Kleermaker during the practical phase of his graduation in dredging

Yesterday, Wim Kleermaker graduated at the TU Delft on a research project he conducted on our slurry test circuit at Damen Dredging Equipment. Specifically, he was investigating the wear behaviour in our dredge pumps. The noteworthy aspect of this project, was that Wim was supervised by our colleague Suman Sapkota. As long time readers in the audience might remember Suman was my own pupil some years ago1.

Example of a worn impeller at the Damen Dredging Experience
Example of a worn impeller at the Damen Dredging Experience

Wear is a very common process in the dredging industry and one of the main cost factors in a project2. It is beneficial to know the amount of wear to expect in a certain condition and be able to predict the budget to reserve for this nuisance. This is only possible when we as a manufacturer will be able to predict the wear rate and pattern can provide the information to the operator for his estimates. We do have historical data that will allow us to provide a ball park figure, but a more analytical approach might assist us in particular unusual cases. Furthermore, it will also provide us insight in the impact of certain design decisions for the wear performance of a certain pump design. For Wim’s graduation, he had to approach this academically: come up with a simulation model and verify this with measurements.

Damen dredge pump slurry test circuit on the outfitting quay in Nijkerk
Damen dredge pump slurry test circuit on the outfitting quay in Nijkerk

The measurements were done in our slurry pump test circuit. This circuit has been highlighted a couple of posts back3. For Wim’s experiments, he used an impeller under a certain operating condition and mixture properties. Before and after a representative period, the condition of the impeller was measured and the difference is a measure of the wear experienced.

CFD result for the wear experiments
CFD result for the wear experiments

Wear (or scientifically: erosion) is related to the impact of the particles on the material surface. In order to know the kinetic energy of the particles, the flow field has to be known. As the flow fleild cannot be measured directly at the test circuit, we have to resort to Computation Fluid Dynamics. We already know of Suman’s graduation, to look for patterns in the flow lines, but Wim has extended the procedure to also quantitively estimate the related erosion.

Comparing CFD results (l) with measured erosion (r)
Comparing CFD results (l) with measured erosion (r)

Although there is only a limited amount of data available, comparing the results of the CFD estimation and the measured erosion are looking promising. This is certainly a workflow that will provide us the unique tools for engineering better pumps and assisting customers in their specific projects.
Although Wim will not join our ranks in the dredging community and pursue a different career in another interesting industry, we are sure he will be constructive and dedicated colleague at Marin.

Another master and student fighting evil forces (Credit: Star Wars)
Another master and student fighting evil forces (Credit: Star Wars)

References

  1. Graduation Suman Sapkota: Where wear parts were worn down, Discover Dredging
  2. Wear parts, Discover Dredging
  3. Student Interviews On Their Projects With Our Dredge Pump Slurry Test Circuit In Damen Nieuws, Discover Dredging

See also