Surface deformation under overlapping impacts of solid particles

To improve the accuracy of erosion prediction, the effect of subsequent particles impacting the same area while the first single particle rebounds from the substrate must be considered. This issue has rarely been considered in studies pertaining to erosion damage. In the present study, the ABAQUS software is used to investigate the erosion crater morphology and stress distribution on a target material subjected to overlapping impacts of spherical particles. Subsequently, the validated model is applied to investigate the effect of the overlapping impacts of particles on the target. Accordingly, the correlation between erosion severity and the impact locations of the two incident particles is quantified. The results show that the horizontal distance between two solid particle impact locations can significantly affect the erosion magnitude and pattern. The interactions of the resulting craters diminish when the horizontal distance exceeds 0.6 times the particle diameter. When the horizontal distance is approximately 0.06 times the particle diameter, the energy loss originating from collisions reaches the maximum, which modifies the crater morphology. The present study is expected to provide in-depth insights into erosion mechanisms and erosion modeling.