Abstract

In turbulent flows, the extent of erosive wear is given by particle impacts caused deviated from nominal flow by turbulent fluctuations. This paper describes an experimental determination of particle impact angle and impact direction distributions from collective wear scar features by image analysis. A slurry pot is used to produce wear damage on copper in exposure to a dilute slurry of glass beads. Degradation is evaluated by weight loss, and topography data for the image analysis is acquired by non-contact 3D profilometry. The results reveal that most of the kinetic energy is transferred by the tangential component of the impact velocity at shallow impact angles, regardless the particle size. Particle impact conditions do not distribute Gaussian and a statistical cut-off angle is established.