Erosive wear testers

Walker and Bodkin (1993) discuss the advantages and limitations of a number of the commonly used erosive wear testers. The influence of particle size and shape are very important as well as the impingement angle and concentration of the slurry. They found that the wear rate increases with the jet velocity to the power of 2.2 (Mens and de Gee (1986) gives 2.8-3.2.). Wear rate is at a maximum at 30° impingement angle. The mechanism is mainly cutting. The rate increases with the size of the particle. 

There are a number of other erosive wear testers used in industry to suit the type of product being evaluated. All the testers must be compared to actual field results. A major problem with many of the methods is the degradation of the slurry under test. The erosive wear of polyurethanes is very good, so extended testing often needs to be carried out. 

Hector Mcl. Clark and associates (Clark et al., 2000 Clark and Wong, 1995) developed a wear tester based on a high-speed disk and on a slurry pot to evaluate the nature of erosive wear. Another type of slurry pot test was described by the U.S. Bureau of Mines (Blickensderfer et al., 1987) where only a very low angle of incidence was observed. 

Clark, H. McL, J. Tuzsion, and K. K. Wong. "Measurements of Specific Elements for Erosive Wear Using a Coriolis Erosion Tester." Wear 241 (2000) 1-9. 

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