[Wajee]

Hello everyone,
I am currently conducting an erosion analysis of a centrifugal compressor made from aluminum alloy (C354). I've noticed that the default aluminum material properties in CFX have a hardness level of 30 HB, which is significantly lower than the hardness range of 90-120 HB for the C354 alloy. This discrepancy could potentially impact my simulation results.

Could someone guide me on how to change the material properties in CFX to accurately reflect the characteristics of the C354 aluminum alloy? Any assistance or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help!

[rmrf]

If you're using workbench, you should be able to follow the guide here to add/edit material properties

[BT2786]

Hi Wajee,

You’ve raised an important point—using incorrect material property values can definitely skew erosion and wear predictions, especially in rotating machinery like centrifugal compressors. By default, the material libraries in CFX (and many other solvers) often provide generic values rather than alloy-specific datasets, so it’s always best to cross-check against datasheets or published mechanical property tables for your particular grade (C354 in your case).

To address your specific issue:

Define a New Material in Engineering Data – Instead of relying on the default aluminum, you can create a new material entry and manually input the relevant properties for C354. This should include density, elastic modulus, Poisson’s ratio, yield strength, and hardness (converted to tensile if needed for erosion models).

Unit Consistency – Ensure the hardness is translated into a property that the erosion sub-model actually uses (many erosion correlations are tied to ultimate tensile strength rather than hardness directly). For C354, you can map 90–120 HB into the approximate tensile strength range (using Brinell-to-UTS conversion charts) and input that value instead.

Erosion Correlation Choice – Different erosion models (Finnie, Oka, Tabakoff, etc.) are sensitive to different input parameters. Be sure to confirm which correlation you’re applying in CFX and adjust the input parameters accordingly.

Validation – If this analysis is being used for design-critical decisions, it’s worth validating your model against either empirical test data or published case studies for erosion in aluminum alloys. Even small deviations in property values can accumulate into large predictive errors when simulating particle-laden flow impacts.

Hope this helps you get your setup aligned with the actual C354 alloy properties!