Effect of tangential velocity on erosion of ASTM A-106 Grade B steel pipe under turbulent swirling impinging jet

Swirling jet flows are of interest in many industrial processes such as those involving combustion, separation, propulsion, cooling, dredging, excavation, cleaning, etc. In recent years some researches have dealt with erosion mechanisms behaviour onto different materials, for instance concrete, coatings, ceramics, composites, diamond like carbide films, metallic alloys, etc. However the erosive wear behaviour of metallic materials subjected to swirling impinging jets has not been studied. An erosion tester was designed and built to erode the metallic specimens at swirling and non-swirling conditions. Erosion tests were conducted on seamless carbon steel pipe ASTM A-106 Grade B coupons as target material. Solid particle erosion tests were carried out with 50 µm of aluminium oxide particles at a velocity of 17 m s⁻¹ at two regimes, non-swirling jets and weakly swirling jets (2000–6000 min⁻¹). The impinging angle was 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° in the near-field. Resulting that the dominant erosive wear mechanism at all conditions tested was plastic deformation. Also, the maximum mass loss values were obtained at non-swirling regime and low angles of incidence. Finally, the erosion rate decreased when the swirl number was rised. Hence, the turbulent swirling impingement jet was less severe than turbulent non-swirling impingement jet in the erosion of the A-106 Grade B material.