Your list is just about in order. For a similar alloy the strength will be proportional to the erosion resistance.
Is there any corrosion to consider?
Is this related to abrasion of flow?
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Rust never sleeps
Neither should your protection
EdStainless, Thanks for your response. Responding to your question; I have to use at two places, one in the water service and may have likelihood of corrosion although water will be treated and chemical dosed. The second is a manifold where wells fluids are commingled. Certain wells have high Gas to Oil Ratio (GOR) and a little amount of sand. Combination of high GOR and presence of Sand has resulted in developing a hole across one of the nozzle. The manifold now needs to be replaced with a better material, which has high resistively against abrasion.
If you are concerned by pure erosion there is a standard and software that allow you to calculate the amount of erosion, DNV RP O 501 "erosive wear in piping systems".
In this standard there is no big difference beetween the materials you've mentioned regarding the pure "erosion" damage mechanisms.
If u have also to consider erosion-corrosion then you can have other problems.
I've found in this day for my job a NACE Paper that maybe can be useful to you: NACE paper n 06594 “Erosion Corrosion and Synergistic Effects in Disturbed Liquid-Particle Flow” S. Nesic. You can downloaded from the NACE website.
There is a large difference in erosion resistance when you go from one alloy system to another. It is largely based on the work hardening rates for different materials.
A higher strength steel will have better erosion resistance than lower strength, but there is so little work hardening that in most cases a SS will preform better. Even though they start out 'soft' the 300 stainless grades will develop a high surface hardness quickly.
The duplex SS grades start out very strong. I have seen data on slurry abrasion, cavitation and wet steam impingement that all show duplex SS grades superior to everything except Co based alloys.
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Rust never sleeps
Neither should your protection
Thanks Strider6 and Edstainless for your input. Please let me know if my concept stated below is wrong.
In simple terms there are two factors that increase the erosion resistively, a) metal hardness b) density of metal particles in the alloy. Since both of these factors increases in the materials sequenced in my first post therefore the erosion resistively increases accordingly.
factor (b) doesn't matter. Initial hardness and work hardening rate are what matter.
To be honest, virtually every case also involves corrosion. Even simple cases of wet sand or hot air corrosion is a factor. In this situation the higher corrosion resistance of SS give it a significant advantage.
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Rust never sleeps
Neither should your protection
Ed, My problem is not the corrosion at the moment as it is a closed system and collecting oil from different wells. The problem is Sand erosion. I have recommended API 5L X42 as I do not want to go into Stainless due to welding, cost implications and life of wells. Previously the manifold was A106 Grade B. What is your recommendations in this respect.
I don't think that going to a higher strength steel will get you much improvement. It will help, but you really need to put more effort into design trying to eliminate turbulence and impingement.
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Rust never sleeps
Neither should your protection
X-42 will not out perform A-106 B. They are for all practical purposes the same material and in fact most A-106 B is triple stamped as A-106 B, API 5LX-42 and A-53 B. You will probably see some benefit by jumping to API-5LX 65 or 70.
In my opinion you have to:
1) Be sure that corrosion is not an issue.
2) If you're talking about pure erosion than you can extimate the amount of erosion with the DNV model or other erosion model like "Tulsa" and calcultate the diameter of pipe to avoid erosion.
Erosion is a function also of sand particle size, and other factors like the angle of impact, is not so simply to predict it.
3) If you want to go to Stainless Steel,or other type of CRA (corrosion resistant alloys), you need to take care also to Sour Service, you've not mentioned it, but in case you can have severe limitations in the use of SS and CRA.
