Material deformation and removal due to single particle impacts on ductile materials using smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) was used to simulate the impact of single angular particles on Al6061-T6 targets, and the implications for solid particle erosion were discussed. The results of the simulations were verified by comparison to measurements obtained from impact experiments performed using a gas gun which was specifically designed to accelerate angular particles without disturbing their orientation with respect to the target. Both the simulations and the experiments showed that an increase in impact angle and initial orientation of the particle altered the deformation mechanism of the target material, as noted by other investigators. For impact angles close to normal, a significant amount of target material was extruded and piled up at the edge of the impact craters, due to the limited strain hardening of Al6061-T6. However, for certain combinations of incident parameters, the particle machined the surface and a chip was removed. With appropriate constitutive and failure parameters, SPH was demonstrated to be suitable for simulating all of the relevant damage phenomena, including crater formation, material pile-up and chip separation.