Jet wear test

Abrasive wear is a type of erosive stress that occurs when particles in a medium strike a surface. The medium can be liquid or gaseous. The rate of material removal in abrasive wear is significantly influenced by the angle of incidence. Depending on the angle, a distinction is made between sliding, oblique, and impact wear.

This form of wear occurs in many industrial applications, such as pneumatic conveying systems, cement production, power plant operations, etc. The wear occurs in the conveying lines. All three types of wear are particularly evident in pipe bends. To simulate these different influences, the jet wear test rig allows samples to be mounted at various incidence angles. The jet wear test facility at ISAF operates on the injector principle. In this process, the carrier medium is blown at high pressure through a nozzle into the mixing chamber. The suction creates a vacuum, which draws the solid material from a second line and accelerates it along with the flow, Figure 1.

To expand the range of solids that can be blasted, nitrogen can also be used as the carrier medium. This makes it possible to blast coal dust as well. In this test, the abrasive is not recycled and is used only once to ensure the reproducibility of the test. The test stand has a modular design and can be customized for specific user requirements.