Some thoughts on modelling the effects of oxygen and particle concentration on the erosion-corrosion of steels in aqueous slurries

Advances in the understanding of slurry erosion-corrosion has gained momentum in recent years, due to the wide range of laboratory studies carried out in such environments. There are now new insights into the causes of synergistic effects in such environments for many particle/target/environment combinations. However, identifying such effects is difficult because in aqueous conditions, the corrosion and erosion variables are not independent of each other. In this work, some new developments on the modelling of slurry erosion-corrosion processes are described for steels. The effects of increases in flow velocity, and oxygen and particle concentration are considered. Theoretical erosion-corrosion maps are constructed showing the differences between the erosion-corrosion mechanisms as a function of these variables. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.