Finite element analysis of anti-erosion characteristics of material with patterned surface impacted by particles

Inspired by the dorsal patterns of living beings in the windy desert, we study the anti-erosion behavior of materials with surface patterns impacted by particles using Finite Element Method (FEM). Using Ti-6Al-4V alloy as the target material and alumina particles as the impact particles, we systematically examine the effects of the impact angle and velocity of particles and target surface with varying surface feature sizes on the erosion mechanism and ant-erosion performance. The simulation results show that the erosion rates against the effective impact angle for our designed surface structures are quite different from those for the flat surface, also suggesting that the effective impact angle concept is insufficient to describe the erosion behavior for curved surfaces. Interestingly, a patterned surface may increase or decrease the erosion rate in comparison with the flat surface. In particular, certain patterned surface structures, which are able to effectively absorb plastic dissipation and thus reduce the damage dissipation, are able to greatly reduce the erosion rate, suggesting that surface pattern can be optimally designed to maximize the anti-erosion performance.