Edge effect in high speed slurry erosion wear tests of steels and elastomers

While the slurry transportation via pumping is an increasingly viable alternative for the conventional fine particle pumping, there are also many applications involving larger particles. However, the published studies on slurry erosion have mainly been conducted with fine particle sizes. In this work, both fine and large particle high speed slurry erosion of commercial wear resistant materials is studied.
The high speed slurry-pot wear tester was used with edge protected samples to simulate the wear conditions in industrial slurry applications, such as tanks and pipelines. Two quenched wear resistant steels together with natural rubber and polyurethane lining materials were tested, and the results were compared with the results of the same materials tested without sample edge protection. The tests were performed using 15 m/s speed, 45° and 90° sample angles, and 9 wt% and 33 wt% slurry concentrations with particle size ranging from large 8/10 mm granite to fine 0.1/0.6 mm quartz.
With or without edge protection, the steel samples showed stable wear behavior, whereas the elastomers gave notably inconsistent results in different test conditions. Steels exhibited better wear performance with large particles and elastomers with fine particles. In general, the wear losses were 40 – 95 % lower without edge wear, except for elastomers tested with fine quartz at the 45° sample angle, which yielded 25 – 75 % higher weight losses when the sample edges were protected. With increasing abrasive size, the edge wear becomes more dominant.