Wear 268 (2010) 15471550

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Wear
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wear

Short communication

Erosion and abrasion on mild carbon steel surface by steam containing SiC
microparticles
Xu Wanli, Qin Li, Chen Haosheng , Chen Darong
State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A kind of steam impaction apparatus was developed to study the inuence of microparticles on steam
Received 4 August 2009 erosion. After 10 min exposure, no erosion pits appeared on the mild carbon steel surface under the
Received in revised form 7 February 2010 impaction of pure water steam when the steam speed was controlled below the threshold velocity.
Accepted 15 February 2010
However, at the same speed, erosion pits appeared on the surface when SiC microparticles were added
Available online 25 February 2010
into the steam. Further experimental investigations proved that the pits were not from the collision
of microparticles to the metal surface, but similar to the cavitation erosion pits. It indicates that the
Keywords:
microparticle may enhance the liquid impaction erosion besides causing the abrasion, and the generation
Liquid impact erosion
Cavitation erosion
of pit is thought to be the results of cavitation erosion.
Abrasion 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Microparticle

1. Introduction 2. Experimental method

Liquid impact erosion is a big problem for steam turbine espe-
cially at the nal stage blades [13]. It is known that erosion
reduces the fatigue strength and breaks the surface structure and
so on [2]. The erosion mechanism has been studied for a long
time, and it is now commonly acknowledged that the microwa-
ter drop impaction is the main reason for the erosion [3,4]. With
the speed of 5001200 m/s or even higher, water drop causes the
plastic deformation or brittle fracture on the metal surface through
water hammer effect. The continuous mechanical impactions of the
water drops cause the mass loss of the target surface [5,6]. In fact,
the commonly used tap water always contains microparticles, and
the ferric oxides can be peeled from the inside of the superheated
tube [7]. Thus the microparticles effect needs to be considered in
the steam turbine erosion. However, there are few studies on the
inuence of microparticles on the wet steam erosion although the
particles importance has been well acknowledged in the study of
solidliquid erosion [8,9]. Here is an experimental investigation of
microparticles effect on wet steam erosion based on a kind of steam
impaction apparatus [10,11].
Fig. 1(a) shows the schematic of the steam erosion apparatus. A
kind of mild carbon steel (AISI 1045 steel) was used as experimen-
tal material with the size of 50 mm 30 mm 2.5 mm. After being
polished, the surface roughness of the specimen is 20.3 nm (rms).
The chemical composition of this steel is listed in Table 1. There are
four different kinds of steams for each experiment group, and the
contents of the steam for each group are listed in Table 2. Fig. 1(b)
shows the microparticles that originally existed in the tap water,
and Fig. 1(c) shows the SiC microparticles that will be added into
the steam. They are both irregular microparticles with the diam-
eter of 35 m. In order to avoid material destruction because of
water drop impaction, the velocity of steam was 60 m/s considering
that the damage threshold velocity of liquid impaction is 100 m/s
[12]. The impact angle of the steam to the specimen was 20 and
the experimental time lasted 10 min. During the experiment, the
pressure of steam was 0.1 MPa, and the temperature of steam was
110 C. A total of 0.6 g microparticles were mixed equably into the
steam pipeline through designed thruster, and the total mass of wet
steam owing through the pipeline is 1 kg.

3. Results and discussion

After erosion experiments, the eroded surfaces were observed

by scanning electronic microscope. Fig. 2 shows scanning electron
micrographs of the eroded surfaces.
From Fig. 2(1#), there was little damage on the 1# specimen sur-
Corresponding author. face. According to the damage threshold velocity of liquid impact,
E-mail address: chenhs@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (C. Haosheng). the material cannot be destroyed when the impact speed is lower

0043-1648/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.wear.2010.02.021
1548 X. Wanli et al. / Wear 268 (2010) 15471550

Table 1
Chemical composition of AISI 1045 steel (%).

C Mn Si Cr P Cu Ni S Fe

0.370.44 0.500.80 0.170.37 0.801.10 0.021 0.15 0.126 0.001 Others

Table 2
The contents of steam for each group.

Groups I II III IV

Steam De-ionized water steam De-ionized water steam + 0.6 g SiC N2 + 0.6 g SiC Tap water steam
Specimen 1# 2# 3# 4#

than the threshold velocity [12]. The experimental result also
proved this theory when the surface was impacted by de-ionized
water steam. However, when the microparticles were added into
the wet steam, not only indentations but also erosion pits appeared
on the 2# specimen surface, as shown in Fig. 2(2#-1) and (2#-2).
It should be noted that the erosion pits are totally different from
the indentations. The indentations usually have triangle shape.
Their lengths of the sides are 0.53 m, which are smaller than
the microparticles. But for the erosion pits, the shapes are circu-
lar and their brims are smooth. The diameters are 36 m, which
are bigger than those of microparticles. Brittle features such as the
fractures and the transgranular cracks are found around and inside
the erosion pits.
In order to analyze the damage morphology caused by micropar-
ticles, the erosion was investigated on the 3# specimen surface with
the microparticles being accelerated by high-pressured nitrogen.
Fig. 2(3#-1) shows that many scratches and indentations appeared
on the surface, and the scratches are usually strip. Fig. 2(3#-2)
shows that the indentations are usually triangle shape, and the
interior walls are smooth. Besides, lips appear around the edge
of the indentations, which are thought to be the plastic deforma-
tion caused by microparticles impaction. This kind of damage style
is similar to experimental results obtained by Chang et al. [13].
The characteristics of indentations and scratches are different from
those of erosion pits. Thus, the erosion pits are not from the collision
of the microparticles to the solid wall.
Similar erosion pits with the diameter of 28 m appeared on
the 4# specimen surface under the impaction of tap water steam,
as shown in Fig. 2(4#). It is as expected since microparticles exist
in the tap water. However, there is no obvious indentation on the
steel surface, because the microparticles in the tap water may be
not as hard as SiC microparticles. Further more, the erosion pits are
also under the inuence of corrosion, but it is beyond the scope of
this investigation.
The above experiment results indicate that indentations and
scratches were not the only damage style when the steel sur-
face was eroded by wet steam containing microparticles. Erosion
pits also appeared on the surface. But these erosion pits were not
caused by microparticles impact, which was further validated by
the elemental composition detection on the surface. The energy

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of the steam erosion apparatus, where A is the steam generator, B is the mixer, C is the supersonic vibration implement, D is the plunger cylinder, E is
the nozzle, F is the specimen, and G is the kickstand, (b) microparticles in water, and (c) SiC microparticles to be added into steam.
 X. Wanli et al. / Wear 268 (2010) 15471550 1549

Fig. 2. Surfaces of the carbon steels after 10 min erosion. The specimen No. is marked on the up-left corner of each image: (1#) exposed to de-ionized steam with little damage
on the surface; (2#) exposed to de-ionized steam plus microparticles with (2#-1) indentations and erosion pits and (2#-2) the fractures and the transgranular cracks around
and inside the erosion pits; (3#) exposed to SiC microparticles with (3#-1) indentations and scratches and (3#-2) the obvious plastic deformation around the indentation;
(4#) exposed to tap water steam with erosion pits appearing on the surface.

Fig. 3. Energy spectrum done by EDS in Quanta 200 SEM: (a) elements of 1 position and (b) elements of 2 position on (2#-2).
1550 X. Wanli et al. / Wear 268 (2010) 15471550
Fig. 4. Erosion pit induced by erosion of wet steam containing microparticles.
spectrums of 1 and 2 positions in Fig. 2(2#-2) were shown in
Fig. 3. Because there is little Si on the original steel surface before
the experiment, the Si peaks appearing in the curves represent
the direct contact of the microparticles to the specimen surfaces.
Compared with the few concentration of Si on the 1 position, the
generation of erosion pit was not from the collision by micropar-
ticle. Thus, microparticle may cause additional effect to generate
erosion pits.
The condensed liquid containing microparticle may have gas
nuclei, and the reduction of pressure provides the condition to
make the gas nuclei grow micro-bubble after the wet steam was
spouted from the nozzle, which consequently promote the occur-
rence of cavitation. The coupled damage caused by silt abrasion
and cavitation has been investigated by the experiments includ-
ing articial particles [14,15], and the experiments in sandy water
[16,17]. In those experiments, the specimen surface was damaged
not only by the abrasion from the particles collision, but also by
the cavitation erosion from the collapse impingement. That is, the
silt erosion is worsened by the presence of cavitation. In order to
further analyze the main reason to generate erosion pits, the ero-
sion pits induced by wet steam erosion containing microparticles
were compared with those induced by cavitation erosion. Chen et
al. [18] and Wang et al. [19] performed cavitation erosion exper-
iments, and reported that the erosion pit has a round shape and
around and inside pit appear brittle features. Compared with the
erosion pit induced by erosion of wet steam containing micropar-
ticle, as shown in Fig. 4, the characteristics have many similarities.
The above analysis indicates that cavitation erosion occurs during
the erosion of wet steam containing microparticles.
4. Conclusions
Based on a developed steam erosion apparatus, the inuence of
microparticles on the wet steam erosion is investigated. Two main
conclusions can be drawn from the experiment results:
(1) The microparticles with the diameter of 35 m can lower the
threshold velocity of the liquid impact erosion.
(2) Besides causing the abrasion, microparticles also cause addi-
tional effect to enhance erosion on the steel surface. The
erosion pits are totally different from the indentations caused
by microparticles, but similar to cavitation erosion pits. Thus,
microparticles play an important role in the wet steam erosion,
and the erosion pits are thought to be the results of cavitation
erosion.
Acknowledgments
Project (No. 50975158) supported by NSFC, and Project
(2007CB707702) supported by National Basic Research Program
of China are thanked. The authors would also like to thank Yang
Wenyan (Tsinghua University) for her help in SEM pictures.
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