Energy based approach for understanding water droplet erosion

Water droplet erosion (WDE) is a complex wear phenomenon with many interacting parameters. For decades, many test rigs and instruments have been developed to study it, producing a vast amount of useful data pertinent to WDE resistance of different structural materials. Comparing test results produced by different test rigs has always been a challenge, since test conditions used by each rig were difficult to replicate by other test setups. In this work, a new method of representing WDE results in terms of the applied energy intensity is proposed. This method is used to report the WDE test results of three structural materials (12% Cr stainless steel, Ti6Al4V and TiAl) tested at various conditions. The new representation enables better comparison between test results. A new coefficient (xi) is introduced as a measure of how representative the applied energy intensity is for WDE tests. The proposed severity coefficient (xi) captures the variation in the absorbed energy by the sample's surface due to test conditions change. This is achieved by quantifying the materials response to the change in WDE test parameters. (xi) is then used to compare the results of WDE experiments done at various erosion conditions or even on different test rigs. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.