Development of new testing method by centrifugal erosion tester at elevated temperature

A new experimental apparatus which can evaluate particle erosion at high temperature is proposed. This apparatus has the following characteristics: • Particles are accelerated by centrifugal force of a rotating nozzle. So, particle impingement velocity is easily adjusted by rotating speed of the nozzle. • Nine test pieces can be supplied for one test, and temperature of the test pieces is controlled independently. So, erosion data under various temperature conditions can be obtained in only one test. • A test piece is heated by a cartridge heater directly. So temperature of test pieces rise in short duration, and electric power required for erosion tests is lower than blast type high temperature erosion apparatuses. To confirm that the new apparatus can obtain similar erosion data to the data obtained by conventional apparatuses, some preliminary experiments have been performed. As a result, it was confirmed that the new centrifugal erosion apparatus can obtain similar erosion rates and velocity exponents to the data obtained by conventional erosion apparatuses. The erosion rates of steels containing various amount of Cr obtained by the new centrifugal erosion apparatus showed similar tendency to the data obtained by Levy and Man [A.V. Levy, Y.-F. Man, Erosion–corrosion mechanisms and rates in Fe–Cr steels, Wear 131 (1989) 51] using a blast type erosion apparatus.