Testing - Abrasive Wear
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ABRASIVE WEAR, IMPACT WEAR, ABRASIVE WEAR TESTER

Wear of equipment can be a costly problem when storing and handling abrasive bulk solids. Frequently, abrasive bulk solids like roofing granules, alumina, fly ash, clinker, and copper concentrate can rapidly erode steel surfaces used in transfer chutes, hoppers, and screw feeders.

Common factors affecting abrasive wear are:

Surface hardness and toughness

Particle hardness

Velocity of particles across surface

Solids pressure against surface

Temperature

Impact angle

Flow rate

Particle size, shape, distribution

Several important tests can be performed to determine the cause of abrasive wear. For analyzing sliding wear, we use our patented wear tester with your abrasive bulk solids and representative process conditions. For impact and pneumatic mechanisms, we set up a physical model to accurately perform these tests while investigating the effects of major variables.

	Abrasive wear tests		Applications
	Sliding mechanism		Evaluate wear with silos, hoppers, transfer chutes due to bulk solid sliding along surface
	Impact mechanism		Evaluate wear with hoppers or chutes where large drop height or velocity can cause wear
	Pneumatic mechanism		Evaluate wear in pneumatic conveying line, specifically in line transition (elbow or sweep)

Solutions for reducing or eliminating costly abrasive wear problems include:

Modify process – reduce particle velocity or impact pressure

Modify the process – reduce particle velocity or impact pressure

Modify the bulk solid – change particle hardness, shape, or size

Modify the equipment – use shock-absorbing surfaces or special elbows

Example results from wear tester
(click to enlarge)

Abrasive wear tester

Abrasive wear in long radius sweep
(click to enlarge)