STUDY ON SLURRY EROSION BEHAVIOUR OF DUCTILE TYPE MATERIALS AND LASER CLADDED SURFACES

Abstract

Material loss due to erosion wear is a serious problem associated with flow of solid-liquid mixtures. Slurry erosion limits the useful life of equipment and is therefore a critical parameter for design, selection and operation of the hydraulic transportation system. Engineering interest is to estimate the service life of equipment / components subjected to slurry erosion and to investigate the possibilities of enhancement of their life. A critical review of the literature on gas-solid and solid-liquid erosion has been carried out. It is seen that gas-solid erosion is relatively well understood as compared to solid-liquid erosion. ASTM G76-95 has recommended Jet-impingement test as a standard method for evaluating gas-solid erosion where as no such method has been accepted for slurry erosion. Hence a number of bench scale test rigs are available to evaluate the slurry erosion. The data on erosion wear through these test rigs shows a large variation of the order of 1:10000, which can be attributed to different experimental conditions existing in these test rigs. Among the various selected test rigs, a slurry pot tester has been commonly used by several investigators. In a slurry pot tester, two wear specimens have been generally rotated with or without a propeller. The propeller is needed for suspension of solid particles. But rotation of the propeller with wear specimen at different test speeds generates different turbulence and flow field inside the pot, and the particles may not remain uniformly distributed in the pot.