Large scale 50 × 50 mm sintered nanostructured zirconia ceramics were fabricated via industrially viable dry pressing routes. The green bodies were sintered by a two-stage process and the optimised sintering conditions are reported. The suitability of nanostructured zirconia for demanding applications in petrochemical valve components was investigated by slurry impingement erosion experiments. Zirconia showed a 60-fold improvement compared to commonly used stellite-coated commercial stainless steel specimens under test conditions while no tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation was observed after erosion. The enhanced performance was also valid when compared with reported erosion resistant properties of alumina and zirconia components by a factor of 36 and 3, respectively. This suggests nanostructured zirconia as a potential robust alternative material for construction of internal trim components of petrochemical valves.
Funding
EPSRC (EP/L024780/1) and Finance SouthEast (EPSRC Reference: EP/I500227/1).
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
Materials
Published in
Ceramics International
Volume
44
Issue
9
Pages
10539 - 10544
Citation
SAREMI-YARAHMADI, S., BINNER, J.G.P. and VAIDHYANATHAN, B., 2018. Erosion and mechanical properties of hydrothermally-resistant nanostructured zirconia components. Ceramics International, 44(9), pp. 10539-10544.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2018-03-10
Publication date
2018-03-13
Notes
This paper was published in the journal Ceramics International and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ceramint.2018.03.074.