Particle erosion behaviour of boiler tube materials at elevated temperature

The particle erosion behaviour of typical boiler tube materials, including carbon steel, low alloy steels and austenitic steels, at elevated temperatures up to 650 °C was studied using irregularly shaped silica particles. Using 304 steel, the influence of various factors, namely particle concentration, velocity and impingement angle, was examined. The erosion behaviour did not seem to differ significantly from that obtained at room temperature. The erosion rate was a linear function of the particle concentration. The velocity exponents obtained at 300 and 650 °C were both approximately 2.8. The peak impingement angle was at acute angles of 20° – 30°, with a tendency for the peak angle to be slightly higher at 300 °C than at 650 °C. However, the temperature effect was clearly observed in that the erosion rate at acute impingement angles increased significantly with the temperature suggesting that the steel tends to show a behaviour more typical of ductile materials as the temperature is increased. The erosion morphologies at low angles indicated cutting for every temperature used and the lengths of the cutting tracks obtained at 20° also increased with temperature.The erosion rate varied significantly between materials, e.g. the alloy (Incoloy) 800 eroded the most and the 12Cr-1Mo-V steel eroded the least at every temperature used, although every material showed an increase in the erosion rate with temperature. From an attempt to compare the erosion rate data obtained at 20° for every material at every temperature with the tensile properties of the steels, it was found that the yield strength of materials correlates reasonably well with the erosion rate. The erosion rate was apparently proportional to the reciprocal of the yield strength, suggesting that the flow stress included in Finnie's cutting theory may be conveniently substituted by the yield strength multiplied by a constant.