Investigation of Slurry Erosion Behavior of Glass Fiber Polymer Reinforced Composites

Abstract

Slurry erosion is a severe problem as it leads to considerable expense caused by failures, downtime, and material replacement costs. These problems are observed in fluid machineries and fluid transportations, especially in pipelines applications such as oil and gas industry, industrial drainage, water transportation, petrol pipelines, etc. Slurry erosion is dependent on several parameters such as slurry properties, service conditions, and material properties. The present work is undertaken to study the development, characterization and erosion wear performance of polyester resin reinforced with E-glass woven fiber. Focus will be on glass fiber reinforcements as the major type of fiber materials due to cost efficiency and high mechanical properties. In order to perform the desired study, a detailed literature review was performed to investigate the different types of resins, reinforcement fibers, and test conditions available for FRPs. Parameters used in the investigation: Using silica sand of 500 µm as erodent, velocities of 10.94, 13.02, 15.45, 17.01, 18.4, 18.75, 20.66, and 23.43, and angles of 15, 30, 45, 60 , 75 and 90 at constant test duration of 1.5 hours. And Erosion test was performed in each parameter with repetition factor equals 3. The results are analyzed using design of experiment approach and applying Taguchi method and ANOVA to find the best processing conductions that leads to minimum losses to the test samples using Minitab 19.