Wear 263 (2007) 278–283

Short communication

Sand erosion testing of novel compositions of hard ceramics

D.W. Celotta a , U.A. Qureshi a , E.V. Stepanov a,∗ , D.P. Goulet a , J. Hunter a , C.H. Buckberry b ,
R. Hill c , S.V. Sherikar c , M. Moshrefi-Torbati d , R.J.K. Wood d
a
IMI Vision, USA
b
IMI Vision, UK
c Control Components Inc., USA
d RIfI, School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton, UK

Received 1 September 2006; received in revised form 22 November 2006; accepted 7 January 2007
Available online 23 May 2007

Abstract
The sand erosion rates of novel compositions of hard ceramics such as tungsten carbide, silicon nitride, silicon carbide, and partially stabilized
zirconia have been tested in air-sand erosion facilities. A new testing facility that ensured stable and reproducible erosion testing with sand velocities
and concentrations up to 250 m/s and 5 wt% in air, respectively, was built at IMI. Special rig design features allowed accurate sand consumption
monitoring during each test. High-speed photography was used to determine the sand velocity distribution at each test setting. Parallel testing of
these materials in the benchmark facility at the University of Southampton elucidated the test parameters critical for reproducibility of the results
in different test configurations. High-speed visualization of the sand impact on the material surface demonstrated fragmentation of almost every
sand particle in the range of velocities of 60 m/s and higher. The evidence of extensive fragmentation contributed to understanding the origin of
the erosion resistance of hard ceramics. The values of the velocity exponent (n) were typical of those reported in literature. However, unlike the
expected erosion behavior of a brittle material, an ultrafine grained binderless tungsten carbide was more erosive at low impact angle.
© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Erosion; Valve; Sand; Hard ceramics; Tungsten carbide

1. Introduction
Selection of materials capable of withstanding sand erosion is
one of the major problems encountered when designing valves
for oil and gas severe service applications [1–3]. The erosion
problem is particularly acute for gas choke valves where natu-
ral gas, initially compressed to 200–500 bar, may reach sonic
velocity within the choke trim. The enormous fluid velocity
accelerates entrained sand particles that subsequently impinge
onto walls of the valve parts as well as the downstream pipework.
Testing the erosion resistance of materials at conditions corre-
sponding to those in the field, as well as studying the erosion
damage mechanism, is essential for both comparing existing
materials and understanding the route to better compositions.
To test materials in a laboratory, typically particles are
injected into a tube with internal air streams that can approach
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 763 488 5420; fax: +1 763 488 5430.
E-mail address: eugenes@imivision.com (E.V. Stepanov).
sonic velocity at the outlet to accelerate the erodent to high veloc-
ities. The acceleration tube should be long enough to make it
possible for particles of several hundred microns in size to reach
the gas flow velocity. Conditions appropriate for testing materi-
als erosion as relevant to applications in the oil and gas industry
were considered previously [4] in connection with the design
of a test rig in the Research Institute for Industry (RIfI) at Uni-
versity of Southampton, UK. The rig served as a benchmark for
evaluating the erosion resistance of hard materials and coatings
for many years [2,5,6]. The sand flux generated in the test rig
was evenly distributed over a 16 mm diameter nozzle area and
produced a uniformly eroded scar of about 20–25 mm in diam-
eter, which was suitable for fundamental studies of the erosion
damage mechanisms.
However, testing new experimental materials, many of which
can only be made in a laboratory as small specimens, requires
a smaller scale facility operating in the same range of parti-
cle velocities. Such a facility has been developed at IMI in the
present work. The testing conditions and the protocol have been
calibrated by testing the same reference materials concurrently

0043-1648/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.wear.2007.01.098
 D.W. Celotta et al. / Wear 263 (2007) 278–283 279

with RIfI. High-speed video has been utilized to correlate sand

velocities in both facilities as well as to visualize the process
of the sand-surface collision. The developed testing protocol
has been applied to evaluating the erosion resistance of several
hard ceramics that were preliminarily selected as prospective
candidates for valve applications exposed to severe service.

2. Experimental procedure

2.1. Erosion test setup

A schematic of the test setup, referred below as the IMI setup,

is shown in Fig. 1. Dried, compressed air is passed through a
pressure regulator, 10, to a Coriolis flow meter that measures
the total air used. The flow was split into two paths, the first
passing through a pressure regulator, 6, and then proceeding
to the sand injection chamber, on the top of the acceleration
tube. The core of the tube was composed of six inserts made
of tungsten carbide that formed the straight flow channel for
particle acceleration. The channel was 1.56 m long and 6 mm in
diameter, and was contained within a stainless steel tube with
an exit nozzle made entirely from tungsten carbide. The second
flow path passed to an erodent feeder (Texas Airsonics) with its
own pressure regulator. Erodent was introduced into the second
air stream according to the intensity setting on the erodent feeder,
and this stream joined the first one in the sand injection chamber.
The erodent feeder design incorporated a spiral staircase style
cage inside the unit that, when vibrating, allowed the erodent to
climb to the top of the cage. The speed of the rising erodent is
dependent upon the mass and the shape of the erodent particles,
along with the vibration intensity selected. An erodent rate plot
was created that related erodent feed rate as a function of the
intensity setting, and was used to set erodent mass flow levels
to between 1 and 4% of the air mass flow. The erodent feed rate
was independent of the pressure applied.
The sample was held in the erosion test chamber, 2, in a fixture
that allowed for angle variation of the sample with respect to the
vertical flow path. A stand-off distance of 30 mm separated the
exit orifice from the sample. The fixture completely surrounded
the vertical pipe orifice, sample, and an exhaust that was con-
nected to the debris collector vacuum, 15. The RIfI air-sand
erosion facility details can be found in Ref. [4]. Fig. 1. A schematic of the test setup with major components indicated: acceler-
The erodent used in tests of IMI and RIfI was silica sand, ation tube (1), erosion test chamber (2), sand feeder (3), compressed air supply
(4), Coriolis flowmeter (5), acceleration tube pressure regulator (6), sand injec-
Chelford 52, obtained from WBB Minerals, with a mean par-
tion chamber (7), exit nozzle (8), material specimen (9), inlet pressure regulator
ticle size of 267 ␮m. The sand was sieved to between 180 and (10), sand flow intensity regulator (11), sand feeder pressure regulator (12), sand
355 ␮m. The mean particle size was similar to sand used pre- feeder pressure indicator (13), Coriolis flowmeter mass flow rate, density, and
viously in erosion tests at Southampton to simulate offshore temperature indicators (14), debris collection vacuum (15).
erosion conditions and hence allowed comparison between the
current results and the existing database. respectively. High-speed camera measurements by Photron
FASTCAM (60–250,000 frames/s) had been performed to deter-
2.2. Testing procedure mine the sand particle impact velocities. Thirty particles were
sampled in the video analysis to produce a histogram of the
Tests were performed at several pressures at the entrance particle velocities. The average sand velocities at the standard
to the acceleration tube depending upon the erodent veloc- settings were determined as 75, 105, 150, and 180 m/s with
ity desired. Regulator gauge pressures of 34, 69, 138 and standard deviations in the range of 12–15% (increased with the
207 kPa were used as standard test settings. The settings cor- velocity). In order to verify that the selection of particles in the
responded to air mass flow rates of 3.1, 4.6, 7.4, and 9.7 g/s, video analysis was representative, computational fluid dynamics
280 D.W. Celotta et al. / Wear 263 (2007) 278–283

Table 1
Origin, composition and basic properties of hard ceramics under test
Alias Material Manufacturer Composition (%) Density (g/cm3 ) Hardness,
HRa (Hv)

WC CNC68 Kennametal WC (87), TiC (1.4), TaC/NbC (3.7), Co + Ni + Cr + Mo (7.6) 14.0 93.7
TC C6 Kennametal WC (94), TaC/TiC (<0.8), Co (5–6) 15.0 92
CB Cerbide Cerbide WC (>99), other (<1) 15.5 95.5
SN SiN 147-31N Ceradyne Si3 N4 (93), other (7) 3.2 90a (1450)
TX Technox 3000 Dynamic Ceramic ZiO2 (95), Y2 O3 (5) 6.1 89a (1350)
a Approximate conversion from Vickers hardness given in parenthesis.

(CFD) simulations of the particle acceleration in the test facility

was performed by using Fluent 6.2 software. Histograms of the
impact velocities of several thousands particles tracked by CFD
matched the video data histograms well.
High-speed camera measurements have also been performed
on the RIfI test rig to determine the particle velocity distributions
for the same sand used as an erodent. The average velocities in
the reference tests were defined as 50, 100 and 160 m/s with
standard deviations also in the range of 12–15%.
Special attention was paid to monitoring the erodent con-
sumption during the tests. Measurements of this parameter were
achieved by weighing the entire sand feeder (to ±0.1 g) every
time the test was interrupted for the erosion measurements of a Fig. 2. Increase in the material volume loss at different amounts of erodent; the
material test specimen. The measurements were taken in inter- erodent velocity is 105 m/s.
vals of 10–45 min, dependent upon the erosion rate. The time
intervals were determined such that at least five data points could ior is present, for example as for silicon nitride and tungsten
be collected over the test and at least 7–8 mg of the sample could carbide C6 in the figure. The slope of a steady-state part of
erode. The weight loss of the specimen for each data point was the plots was considered as the material erosion rate in those
defined by making five consecutive weight measurements on a cases.
scale, with accuracy of 0.2 mg, and the average was reported. The effect of sand flow concentration, defined as the ratio of
The tests aimed to determine changes in the erosion rate with the sand mass flow to the air mass flow, on the erosion rate was
sand velocity for all the materials under consideration at a normal analyzed in series of experiments with tungsten carbide C6 and
angle of the sand impact. This is assumed in the description of CNC68, Fig. 3. As seen, the erosion rate, expressed as the vol-
the data presented unless stated otherwise. ume of eroded material per the amount of erodent used, remained
constant. Absence of the sand concentration effect meant that
2.3. Materials the range of the sand flux magnitudes chosen for the tests was
low enough to avoid the particle–particle interaction as the sand
A summary of the hard ceramic materials tested in this study particles approached the specimen surface and met the recoiled
are presented in Table 1. These materials include tungsten car- particle flux. On the other hand, that implied direct proportion-
bide, a mainstream material for valve applications. Two grades ality between the material loss rate per time and the sand particle
of this material were obtained from Kennametal. C6 represented flux. This proportionality made it possible to correlate tests that
a common grade with 6% of cobalt binder used for severe erosion
applications with the average grain size of 1.5 ␮m, and CNC68
was an advanced erosion–corrosion resistant formulation with
an average grain size of 0.8 ␮m. Cerbide was a new binderless
formulation of tungsten carbide with grains in an ultrafine range
(0.3–0.4 ␮m). In addition to the formulations of tungsten car-
bide, silicon nitride and a new composition of partially stabilized
zirconia were tested as well.

3. Results and discussion

Examples of the raw data on the progress of erosion with

the amount of erodent used are presented in Fig. 2. The ero-
sion rates were calculated by taking the average slope of those Fig. 3. Erosion rates of two grades of tungsten carbide at different sand concen-
graphs. In some cases, an initial period of non-linear behav- tration; the sand velocity is 150 m/s.
 D.W. Celotta et al. / Wear 263 (2007) 278–283 281

Fig. 4. Erosion rates of stainless steel 316 at different sand velocities obtained Fig. 5. Erosion rates of tungsten carbide CNC68 at different sand velocities
by testing in the IMI and RIfI facilities. obtained by testing in the IMI and RIfI facilities.

Table 2 in the accepted range of the test parameters. Another series of

Material erosion parameters: erosion rate (Er) by sand with velocity 105 m/s at
90◦ and 30◦ impact; pre-exponent (C) and exponent (n) of the Er at 90◦ velocity
comparative tests was run for tungsten carbide CNC68, Fig. 5.
dependence The results also showed good correspondence to each other.
The data obtained on testing other materials in the IMI facility
Alias Er (90◦ ) Er (30◦ ) C (×10−5 ) n
(mm3 /kg) (mm3 /kg)
are also summarized in Table 2. The erosion rate for C6 corre-
lated well with previous measurements on tungsten carbide with
WC 0.18 0.12 0.66 2.2 6% of cobalt binder [1]. The lowest erosion rate was observed
TC 0.39 0.28 3.75 2.0
CB 0.08 0.11 1.79 1.8
in Cerbide that performed about five times better than C6 and
SN 0.51 0.26 3.89 2.0 two times better than CNC68 at the normal sand impact angle.
TX 1.25 0.85 0.20 2.8 This remarkable difference was consistent with a general trend
SS 316 30.2 40.1 36.8 2.4 of increasing erosion resistance with decreasing the grain size
and the binder content [7]. Because of the exhibited prospect of
this material, it was also tested in the RIfI rig, which showed the
were run with different sand content in terms of the material loss same results.
per sand used. The angle dependence of the erosion rate was obtained by
Comparison of the erosion test results for a commonly used testing the materials at an impact angle of 30◦ with the sand
reference material, stainless steel 316, that were performed con- velocity of 105 m/s, Table 2. It is generally believed [8–11] that
currently at the IMI and RIfI test facilities is presented in Fig. 4. for brittle materials such as hard ceramics a maximum erosion
Correlation between the results was excellent. To describe the rate occurs at 90◦ , whereas for ductile materials this occurs at
velocity dependence of the erosion rate for this material, the oblique impact angles. The expected decrease in the erosion rate
joined set of data was fit by a power law. The fitting parameters at 30◦ was observed for all hard ceramics under test except Cer-
for this and other materials tested are listed in Table 2. The RIfI bide, where the low angle erosion rate increased by almost 40%.
tests were run at sand concentrations below 1% while concen- Because of the importance of this result for ranking the ero-
trations of 2–3% were used in the IMI tests, and the correlation sion resistance of this material, the tests were repeated and good
also demonstrated that the sand content effect was negligible reproducibility of the results was obtained. Furthermore, testing

Fig. 6. A series of high-speed video frames for a 300 ␮m sand particle: approaching the tungsten carbide surface with 63 m/s (a, b), an impact with fragmentation
(c), and recoil of the particle debris (d).
282 D.W. Celotta et al. / Wear 263 (2007) 278–283
Fig. 7. SEM images of the silica sand erodent before (a) and after (b) impacting
tungsten carbide with the sand velocity of 160 m/s.
Cerbide at 30◦ with a higher particle velocity of 180 m/s yielded
the erosion rate equal to that at 90◦ , which indicated that the
angle dependence might change with the sand impact velocity.
These results call for detailed exploration of the mechanism of
the erosion damage in the new generation of tungsten carbide
ceramics represented by this material. A possible explanation of
the unusual erosion increase at low impact angles may be the
fragility of Cerbide in shear that makes it susceptible to a cutting
action.
Whereas the angle function and the velocity exponent of
the erosion rate were mostly attributed to the material damage
mechanism in the literature [8,12], high-speed video analysis
performed in this work revealed another phenomenon that might
contribute to the character of those dependencies. Fig. 6 presents
a sequence of frames that demonstrate fragmentation of a sand
particle upon collision with the specimen surface. The fragmen-
tation of every particle in the field of view was observed at the
sand velocities higher than 75–80 m/s. Comparison of the sand
particles before and after they hit the surface of tungsten carbide
at 160 m/s, Fig. 7, showed that the average particle size decreased
by about three times, which corresponded to 20–30 debris pro-
duced by each particle. This process partially consumed the
impact energy decreasing the amount of energy transferred to the
material deformation, and consequently, to the damage mech-
anisms. This phenomenon has been previously observed and
reported elsewhere for CVD diamonds and B13 C2 [13,14].
The velocity exponent values in Table 2 are typical of those
reported in the literature. For instance, the velocity exponent
of 2.4 for stainless steel compares well with the value of 2.5
that is predicted by Hashish’s model [15] (which is essentially
an extension of Finnie’s model [16]) for ductile materials. The
higher value of 2.8 for TX (PSZ) than 2 for tungsten carbide
could be due to a number of parameters that can be determined
once the wear mechanisms have been identified (this is outside
the scope of this paper). However, it may be speculated that either
the flaw distribution in PSZ [17–19] is different and probably
higher than those present in sintered tungsten carbides [20,21]
and these could cause higher velocity exponents or it could be an
artefact of the particle fragmentation. The latter has been seen
for sintered boron carbide [22] and alumina [23]. Erosion mod-
els based on flaws assume material removal by the formation and
intersection of Hertzian cone cracks and are typically linked to
Weibull constants1 for the target material [24]. These models
predict velocity exponents within the range of 2.6–3.0. Further-
more, elastic–plastic fracture based erosion models applicable to
angular erodents suggest that the velocity exponent lies between
2.4 and 3.2 [8].
4. Conclusions
1. A test facility has been built at IMI that ensured accu-
rate and reproducible erosion testing with sand velocities of
50–250 m/s and sand concentrations up to 5% by weight in
air. The sand impact velocities have been verified by both
high-speed photography and computational fluid dynamics
(CFD) simulations. The material erosion rates for both steel
and hard ceramics have been correlated with data obtained
in a benchmark test facility at University of Southampton.
2. Binderless ultrafine grained tungsten carbide (Cerbide)
showed the best resistance to erosion by a normal angle sand
impact. However, the erosion rate increased with lowering
the angle of impact, which is unusual for hard ceramics. The
abnormal angle dependence of the erosion rate calls for a
comprehensive investigation of the erosion mechanism in this
recently introduced type of material.
3. Among two grades of tungsten carbide with similar 6% cobalt
binder content, a grade intercalated with other metal carbides
and with small additions to the binder showed remarkably
better erosion resistance. This indicates that, regardless of
the grain size and the binder amount, there is still potential
to create superior surfaces by varying the chemical content.
4. Other compositions of industrial ceramics studied were found
to be inferior to tungsten carbide base surfaces under high
velocity sand erosion.
1 Weibull constants describe statistical distribution of fracture stress over sur-
face area.
 D.W. Celotta et al. / Wear 263 (2007) 278–283 283

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