A phenomenological model for slurry erosion prediction of thermal spray coatings

Abstract

Erosion is a serious concern for machinery dealing with particle-laden fluids. For protection against erosion, coatings are usually recommended. Laboratory experiments are conducted to evaluate the erosion rates of these coatings. Alternatively, one could consider the use of modeling and simulation to predict the erosion rates. Although several models are available in literature for bulk materials, there is limited work reported in this direction for coatings. In present work, several models from literature were evaluated for their ability to predict the slurry erosion of coatings. A model based upon contact-fracture theory (CFT), proposed in present work, was also evaluated. Another variant of this model considered the effect of splat size. It was observed that none of the existing models evaluated in the present work could predict the erosion rates of the coatings. The proposed CFT model was able to predict the erosion rates with reasonable accuracy, whereas another variant of this model based upon splat size was observed to be inappropriate for predicting erosion rates of coatings. Possible reasons for the observed disparity are discussed.