Hydraulic transport is commonly employed in the mining industry to transport crushed ore to a processing facility. Dense slurry flows inflict heavy wear on pipes, leading to significant process downtime and loss of revenue. Several factors have been identified as key contributors to pipe wear. This work examines the effects of flow rate and solids concentration, and offers a formulation for developing a predictive slurry wear model. A modified flow model was developed and coupled with other wear models to describe wear within slurry pipes.

Preliminary model verification was conducted through experimental testing. Sliding-abrasion wear data was found to be an exponential function of velocity and a linear function of shear stress. The particle impingement wear model produced simulated wear profiles comparable to profiles observed on pipelines in service. The modified flow model has not been validated here, but preliminary results indicate possible improvements in accuracy over the SRC model.