Effects of particle size and size distribution on estimating erosion wear of cast iron in sand-water slurries

Erosion wea r of ca st iro n has bee n ev al uated in a pot tes ter for narrow-sized and I11ulti -s ized parti culate sand- water slurri es . The effects o f particl e si ze and si ze di stributi on on eros ion wea r have bee n anal yzed and th e appli cab il ity of medi an di;1Il1cter or we ight ed I11 ean diameter as an effec ti ve particle size for multi-s i zed slurry for es timating erosion wea r has been investigat ed. It is obse rved that th e mean particle size of th e narrow-si zed particul ate slurry ca n be tak en as th e effec ti ve pa rti cl; si ze for eva lualing th e eros ion wear. However, th e obse rved trend of va ri ati on of erosion wear with parti c le size is not followcd by I11edian or weight ed I11 ean diamcters o f multi-sized slurri es , showin g large dev iat ions . Erosion wea r is a ve ry cru cial paramete r for selection and des ign of slurry transportation sys tems as it aCre cts direc tl y to th e economy of hydrauli c co nvey ancc of so lid s. The servic c life of equipment handlin g so lid-liquid mi xtures are limited du c to ero sion wear and th erefore effo rts ha ve been made in pa st few dec ades to predict the eros ion lo ss of material s. Erosion wea r studi es report ed in th e lit erature 1-(, have ge nerall y been ca rri ed out usin g narrow-sized particulate slurri es. Bree ef 01. 1 have used a speciall y dcsigned pot te ster to eva lu ate eros ion wear of steel grad e 42 and C BR 3 15. 3 in sa nd-water suspensio n. Th ey con duc ted wea r tes ts at different impact an gles usi ng two types of sands havin g med ian particl e size as 0.26 mm and 0.99 mm. They obse rv ed hi gher \Veight loss du e to eros ion with bi gger size particl es durin g th e ex periment s at va ri ous velocities and so lid concentration s. The rati o of th e weight loss due to the t"vo median diameters varied in th e range of 2.9- 12.2 and th ey reported th at th e rat e of in crease in eros ion wear with in crease in parti cle size dec reases at hi gher ve loc it ic s. Elkho l/ proposed a co rrelati on for predictin g the pump wear ba sed on wear tests conducted on jet i mpin gc ment tes ter (J IT). He performed a se ri es of tes ts with three target material s, namely cast iron, mild steel and aluminum. Wear tes ts were co nducted