WearCalc – Maximize equipment wear resistance and calculate the savings

You’ve probably heard the saying “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” WearCalc, available for mobile or desktop, is a calculator that helps you do the math and add up the benefits of upgrading to Hardox^® wear plate.

The best wear protection for your equipment starts with the right wear plate. As your equipment takes a pounding every day, you probably wonder how much wear and tear it can take, if you’ve chosen the right materials and steel grades, and whether your plate is worth the investment.

WearCalc — offered free of charge to SSAB’s wear plate customers — lets you quickly and easily calculate the relative service life for all Hardox wear parts of different grades, so you can choose the best plate for your needs.

You can get WearCalc as an app or as a feature-rich desktop version that offers you the full potential to calculate service life for equipment like dump trucks and tippers, as well as sliding wear, impact wear and erosive wear.

• Works right in your web browser
• Covers sliding, impact and erosive wear
• Advanced calculation on tippers and rigid dump trucks
• Results presented in easy-to-read table format
• Algorithm takes size, shape, impingement angle and velocity of material into account
• Report generator creates a report with input parameters and results table
• Report file can be saved, shared with colleagues, or edited in Microsoft Word
• Available in 11 languages
  
  

WearCalc is a powerful prediction tool that calculates impact wear, sliding wear and erosive wear, and helps you optimize your choice of wear steel for optimal wear resistance.

Impact wear is common in construction, mining, earthmoving and crushing equipment, where large amounts of rocks are repeatedly loaded and unloaded. The repetitive impact of these rocks poses severe wear problems, limiting equipment service life.

The impact wear model takes into account impact angle, size of abrasive material and also mineral composition of the rock.

Sliding wear occurs when abrasive material slides over the steel surface, for example when a mining truck or tipper is unloaded.

The sliding wear model is based on two limiting curves representing the types of surface damage, plastic or cutting. The relationship between the hardness of the steel and the hardness of the abrasive material determines the damage mechanism and thus the relative service life.

Erosive wear (or erosion) occurs when particles at relatively high velocity impact against a surface.

Erosive wear can occur in cyclones, fans, the inside of sharp bends in tubes and pipes, sand and shot blasting equipment, and similar areas where there is considerable relative motion between the metal and the particles.

The impact angle and velocity of the particle are some of the parameters that influence the relative service life for steels in erosive wear conditions.

A model was created to be able to estimate the service life of tippers transporting different abrasive materials. The model is based on field measurements for many tippers working in different areas and with different types of rock. Flow simulations were then done to understand the wear distribution in the tippers and how the design affects the wear. Combining these into an algorithm makes it possible to design a tipper optimized for a specific case.

To optimize a liner package for a mining truck when it comes to wear performance and weight, WearCalc offers a unique tool for understanding wear in different areas of the truck bed. Combining different wear-resistant grades and thicknesses, you can instantly see how this affects the service life of the truck. This enhances mine productivity – and helps to control costs. The model is based on field measurements and advanced flow simulations for predicting the service life of a liner package for a truck bed.