Erosion Testing

Pipe line and equipment erosion cost the oil and gas industry millions of pounds every year. Excessive wear results in downtime, increased maintenance and production cutbacks.

Testing vulnerable components in realistic and accelerated erosive conditions is a key requirement to help understand the erosion process and mitigate serious commercial risk.

TUV NEL's abrasive flow test facility can accurately reproduce the wear seen in sandy production flows and in drilling applications.

Testing regimes include:

Type Testing
Endurance Testing
API 6AVI Slurry Testing
Cyclic Valve Testing

We test components by using a variety of fluid-sand mixtures under realistic operating conditions in a dedicated flow loop. These erosion test results can then be supplemented by CFD (computational fluid dynamics), FEA(finite element analysis) and alternative erosion prediction methods.

Expertise has been developed by testing a wide range of components including:

Hydrocyclones
Flexible hoses
Material coatings
Flowmeters
Flow restrictors
Choke valves
Isolation valves
Piping configurations