Investigation on Solid Particle Erosion Performance of Aluminum Alloy Materials for Leading-Edge Slat

This study aims to characterize solid particle erosion behaviors of three different aluminum alloys (AA2024-T351, AA6061-T651, and AA7075-T651) and reveal their erosion performances on leading-edge slat of airplane wings. Solid particle erosion tests were conducted using silicon carbide erodent particles under the conditions of six different impingement angles (20°-90°) and four different impact velocities (70-192 m/s). The erosion simulations of a leading-edge slat of the aforementioned aluminum alloys were numerically simulated at four different rotation angles (0°-15°) for three different impact velocities (130-250 m/s). A commercial ANSYS Fluent software using the Euler-Lagrange equation and an experimental data-based erosion model was used for the erosion simulations. The experimental results showed that the erosion rate increases with increasing impact velocity and the maximum erosion rate is obtained at the impingement angle of 30° which reflects the ductile manner. Of the three aluminum alloys, the AA6061-T651 exhibited the worst erosion behavior followed by the AA2024-T351 sample, whereas the AA7075-T651 had the best erosion resistance. The numerical results indicated that the erosion rate values of slat surfaces made up of three different aluminum alloys showed a slight increase after a slat rotation angle of 5°.