Study of the parametric performance of solid particle erosion wear under the slurry pot test rig

Abstract

Stainless Steel (SS) 304 is commonly used material for slurry handling applications like pipelines, valves, pumps and other equipment’s. Slurry erosion wear is a common problem in many engineering applications like process industry, thermal and hydraulic power plants and slurry handling equipments. In this paper, experimental investigation of the influence of solid particle size, impact velocity, impact angle and solid concentration parameters in slurry erosion wear behavior of SS 304 using slurry pot test rig. In this study the design of experiments was considered using Taguchi technique. A comparison has been made for the experimental and Taguchi technique results. The erosion wear morphology was studied using micrograph obtained by scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis. At shallow impact angle 30°, the material removal pattern was observed in the form of micro displacing, scratching and ploughing with plastic deformation of the material. At 60° impact angle, mixed type of micro indentations and pitting action is observed. At normal impact angle 90°, the material removal pattern was observed in form of indentation and rounded lips. It is found that particle velocity was the most influence factor than impact angle, size and solid concentration. From this investigation, it can be concluded that the slurry erosion wear is minimized by controlling the slurry flow velocity which improves the service life of the slurry handling equipments. From the comparison of experimental and Taguchi experimental design results it is found that the percentage deviation was very small with a higher correlation coefficient (r2) 0.987 which is agreeable.