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 performance of materials exposed to erosion-corrosion in aqueous slurries, there has been little work on developing a rationale for materials selection in such environments. There is good evidence that the ranking order of materials performance will change in different environments. However, to date, there has been no systematic study carried out to test if such trends are obtained for a wide range of conditions. The object of this work was to address the above issues by investigating the effect of velocity for a range of particle sizes for various classes of materials in an aqueous slurry. The erodents used for the study were alumina and silicon carbide. Erosion maps were constructed based on the results, showing the transitions between the 'wastage' regimes as a function 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 compositions was illustrated. The rationale for using such maps for materials selection was also addressed in the paper