Revision of cavitation erosion database and analysis of stainless steel data

Cavitation erosion data have been accumulated in our laboratory for about 32 years since 1970. The database was constructed as electronic data in MS Excel files. The data files are able to offer quick search in terms of the test material, test method and test conditions from among 859 data. In this study, 131 data since 2003 were newly added to the database constructed in our previous study. The stainless steel data were analyzed, including various stainless steels such as ferritic, austenitic, duplex and martensitic stainless steels. Vibratory cavitation test results for different stainless steels, obtained with varying test conditions of frequency, amplitude and attachment of specimen, were converted analytically to obtain average erosion rates under assumed standardized conditions of a stationary specimen test with 1 mm standoff distance, and with frequency and amplitude as specified by ASTM G32. The average of erosion rate under the standardized condition (ASTM G32, stationary specimen method, standoff distance 1 mm) was determined for different stainless steels. The erosion resistance was defined as a reciprocal of erosion rate, and the correlation between erosion resistance and hardness of the specimen after erosion test was better than with the other mechanical properties. The erosion resistance is equal to 2.6E−07 × (HV × Fmat)2.4 (HV; Vickers hardness, Fmat; material factor), and the correlation coefficient is 0.98. It was concluded that the erosion resistance of different stainless steels could be estimated with high reliability from the material hardness and the material factor.