High speed slurry-pot erosion wear testing with large abrasive particles

One of the testing methods used to simulate slurry erosion in laboratory conditions is the slurry-pot method. In this work, a novel high speed slurry-pot type erosion wear tester was constructed for testing of materials used in mining and other mineral handling applications. In the tester, the samples are attached to a vertical rotating shaft on four levels in a pin mill configuration. High speeds up to 20 m/s at the sample tip can be achieved also with large abrasive size up to 10 mm. In the tests, the equipment proved to be functional and durable even with the high loads created by the high speeds and large abrasive sizes. There are, however, variations in the slurry concentrations inside the pot during testing, leading to different wear rates at the different sample levels. Therefore, a sample rotation test method was developed. By rotating the samples evenly through all sample levels, the overall deviations between samples will be minimized. Furthermore, with the sample rotation method up to eight materials can be tested simultaneously. The slurry-pot is suitable for testing various materials, such as steels and rubbers.