Some recent advances in the development of theoretical approaches for the construction of erosion-corrosion maps in aqueous conditions

Significant progress has been made in the development of methodologies for the construction of erosion-corrosion maps for erosion by solid particles in aqueous conditions. Mathematical models for solid particle erosion have been combined with those for aqueous corrosion, enabling regime transitions to be identified as a function of the main process parameters. The effects of both erosion and corrosion variables have been identified on the maps. An important issue in such work has been the wide range of variables involved in the erosion-corrosion process. This has been addressed through combining such parameters into dimensionless groups. The results indicate that, although there are some limitations with such an approach, the technique does present some important advantages in dealing with the large number of variables associated with a single erosion-corrosion interaction. This paper describes some new developments on the above work, and indicates how the erosion-corrosion transitions, for pure metals and steels, can be described on a single map. Future directions of the work are also addressed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.