Experimental study of particle size, shape and particle flow rate on Erosion of stainless steel

Solid particle erosion is important in many industrial applications including mining and production and transportation facilities in the oil and gas industry. Mechanistic modeling of erosion normally requires particle tracking to determine particle impact speed and angle and employment of erosion ratio equations which define the material mass loss as a function of impacting particle mass, velocity and angle. Particle size, shape and flow rate are other important factors that affect the erosion ratio. In this work, direct impingement erosion tests have been conducted on Stainless Steel 316 using particles with different sizes and shapes. The influence of particle flow rate on erosion test results was also considered and particle velocities were measured to ensure the impact velocities are similar for different particle sizes. It was also found that the particle flow rate could affect the relation between carrier gas velocity and the entrained particle velocity. Angular and semi-round silica sand and round glass beads are used in the experiments to study the effect of particle shape. In the sand experiments, sharpness of particles had a larger influence on the erosion ratio than particle size for particle sizes ranging from 75 mu m to 600 mu m. In the glass bead experiments, small broken particles were found to be embedded in the surface of the material making the analysis inconclusive. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.