Abrasion wear tester for bulk solids handling applications

Abstract

This paper describes the development of an abrasion wear tester to overcome some operational difficulties encountered with a linear abrasion wear tester previously developed at the University of Newcastle, Australia for bulk solids handling applications. These difficulties have been, the large quantity of wear media required, noise from the re-circulating wear media, dust generation and poor reliability. The tester developed is similar to the existing tester in that it allows samples of wall material to be abraded against real life wear media such as iron ore, bauxite, gravel, sand, etc. However, it differs in design to allow a deep bed to be applied under the test specimen so that particles up to 10 mm mean particle size can be accommodated. The machine has an annular turntable and relies on the material contained in an annular trench for bulk solids storage. To ensure random application of the wear media to the test specimen, the bulk solid is mixed continuously by a plough arrangement. The machine has been designed to allow a range of differential testing velocities from 0.2 to 2 m/s. In-plane forces can also be measured using the test specimen holder's integral load beam. This along with the normal force applied to the test specimen may be used to determine the friction between the bulk solid and test specimen for use in estimating wear life. The machine has been found to be quiet, reliable and produces little dust. Comparison tests have been conducted on both wear machines to establish that the new tester is a suitable replacement for the existing machine.