A NOTE ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF MATERIALS PERFORMANCE MAPS FOR RESISTANCE TO EROSION IN AQUEOUS SLURRIES

Although there has been much recent research carried out on the perfor mance of materials exposed to erosion-corrosion in aqueous slurries, t here has been little work on developing a rationale for materials sele ction in such environments. There is good evidence that the ranking or der of materials performance will change in different environments. Ho wever, to date, there has been no systematic study carried out to test if such trends are obtained for a wide range of conditions. The objec t of this work was to address the above issues by investigating the ef fect of velocity for a range of particle sizes for various classes of materials in an aqueous slurry. The erodents used for the study were a lumina and silicon carbide. Erosion maps were constructed based on the results, showing the transitions between the 'wastage' regimes as a f unction of the main process parameters. The erosion maps were combined for the various materials in order to generate materials performance maps. The shift in the boundaries for erosion with various particle co mpositions was illustrated. The rationale for using such maps for mate rials selection was also addressed in the paper. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sci ence S.A.