Why Abrasive Wear Testing?
Abrasive wear results when hard and often angular particles slide or impact against a softer surface. Wear of equipment can be a costly problem when storing and handling abrasive bulk materials such as iron ore, roofing granules, glass, alumina, fly ash, clinker, sand, and copper concentrate. These solids can rapidly erode steel surfaces used in silos, hoppers, transfer chutes, screws or vibratory feeders.
Common factors affecting abrasive wear are:
- Particle hardness
- Surface hardness and toughness
- Velocity of particles across surface
- Solids pressure against surface
- Flow rate
- Impact angle
- Temperature
- Particle size, shape, distribution
Knowing how abrasive a bulk material can be will help the designer to select a suitable abrasion resistant liner or different wear strategy (i.e., rock box, micro-ledges) to ensure equipment longevity, reduce maintenance requirements and liner replacement costs.
Abrasive Wear Tests
Several tests can be performed to evaluate abrasive wear behavior.
- Sliding: evaluate abrasive wear with silos, hoppers, chutes with bulk material sliding along surface
- Impact: evaluate abrasive wear with hoppers or chutes where drop height or velocity causes damage
For analyzing sliding wear, we use our patented wear tester with your abrasive bulk solids and representative process conditions. Click here for a review of abrasive wear estimation. For impact wear, we set up a physical model to accurately perform these tests while investigating the effects of major variables.
Test Results
The abrasive wear test results are presented in a thorough report which contains:
- overview of wear testing apparatus and experimental method
- results in graph and table formats
- qualitative observations of unique test phenomena
- conclusions and recommendations
One of our engineers will review the abrasive wear test results with you. We will answer questions you may have regarding the report content, as well as discuss usage of the results for your abrasive wear applications.
Need to send samples for testing? Click here for additional information.
What’s Next
Contact us to review your abrasive wear testing needs with one of our knowledgeable and experienced engineers. After your abrasive wear characteristics for your material have been measured, Jenike & Johanson can assist you with an effective engineered solution for eliminating or preventing abrasive wear problems commonly experienced in mining, minerals, cement, power, and glass industries.
