Solid Particle Erosion Testing of Helicopter Rotor Blade Materials
- PDF / 1,036,550 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 14 Downloads / 191 Views
TECHNICAL ARTICLE—PEER-REVIEWED
Solid Particle Erosion Testing of Helicopter Rotor Blade Materials Marc Pepi • Richard Squillacioti • Lynne Pfledderer Andrew Phelps
•
Submitted: 13 December 2011 / Published online: 30 December 2011 ASM International 2011
Abstract The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) was asked to participate in an OSD-funded erosion effort by the Coating Technology Integration Office at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Solid particle (sand) erosion testing was conducted by the University of Dayton Research Institute to determine the erosion resistance of materials currently used on the leading edges of Army aviation rotor blades of aircraft in Southwest Asia (SWA). This testing and evaluation was important for two reasons; first, Iraq and Afghanistan are the primary locations of our current anti-terror operations, and second, the sands within these two countries are the worst in the world from an erosion standpoint (dry conditions ? freshest grains of sand ? predominantly angular quartz grains ? blowing
Reprinted with permission from Enabling Sustainable Systems, Proceedings for the MFPT: The Applied Systems Health Management Conference 2011, Society for Machinery Failure Prevention Technology, 2011, pp. 555–579. M. Pepi (&) R. Squillacioti US Army Research Laboratory, Weapons and Materials Research Directorate, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Pfledderer Coating Technology Integration Office, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, USA A. Phelps University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI), Dayton, OH, USA Present Address: A. Phelps Coating Technology Integration Office, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, USA
123
winds). The sand utilized herein is considered even more erosive than the sand from these two countries, since they contain a higher concentration of quartz than the SWA sand. In 2005, observations of actual SWA field failures of helicopter rotor blade protective tapes and coatings were compared to existing state-of-the-art, laboratory-based sand erosion data during a U.S. Army sponsored program. Laboratory-produced data did not match the severity of field-use damage, even under extremely high levels of particle loading. The need to test to erosive failure representative of this environment was determined to be paramount in establishing relative performance levels of erosion resistant protective systems being screened for potential field use. The goal of this effort was to provide two synthetic sand formulas capable of testing various polymer-based candidate rotor blade protective systems to failure. The test media was derived from characterization of sand and dust materials unique to SWA. The synthetic sand mixtures developed by this effort will be incorporated in a new test protocol for sand erosion to represent a truly ‘‘worst case’’ test, with extended application to other aerospace components susceptible to sand erosion damage applicable to Department of Defense activities in most dry—hot desert regions. Comprehensive post-test analysis perf
Data Loading...
