A new impact erosion testing setup through Coriolis approach

Coriolis wear testing is a valuable and practical approach to study the erosive wear of a material within a centrifugal slurry pump and other applicable systems. Impact wear mode is a significant component in erosive wear and simulation. Existing Coriolis erosion testers are primarily for evaluation of sliding wear. Although a few impact wear testing structures were previously proposed within a Coriolis wear testing apparatus, they presented major limitations and low effectiveness. A new structure for impact erosion testing has been developed to provide flexibility of broad impact angles and improved effectiveness and control of erosive wear on test specimens. This new impact testing assembly takes advantage of the mechanical structure and instrumentation on an existing Coriolis (sliding) erosion tester. The far end of each sliding wear channels (specimen holders) is extended with an impact wear testing fixture which consists of a slurry jet nozzle and an impact wear specimen holder with adjustable spacing between them. For reasonable wear life and cost, ceramic nozzles with different opening size options are utilized. The urethane lined sample holder has a mechanism that allows for angular position adjustment so the impact sample angle can be set between 0 degrees and 90 degrees to the incoming slurry jet direction. This combined erosion tester allows both a sliding and an impact wear specimen to be tested in each channel simultaneously. In this study, wear results of some impact erosion specimens are presented along with discussion of other related issues. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.