Design of high-pressure waterjet descaling nozzles testing system with LabVIEW

The descaling technology with high-pressure waterjet is widely used in hotrolling process. Waterjets from descaling nozzles play a crucial role on surface quality of hot-rolling steel billet. Since structure of a nozzle accounts for characteristics of the waterjet produced, nozzle structural data are very important for hotrolling billet descaling. However, some of nozzle structural data can only be obtained through experiment due to machining tolerance generated during the factory production of the nozzle. A set-up investigating descaling nozzles performance was established. Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) was applied to develop a testing system of the set-up, through which the real-time measurement of descaling nozzle data could be achieved. The testing system included three modules, pressure-flow curve, three-dimensional(3D) platform movement track and jet impact force measurement. All the nozzle structural data and water jet performance could be obtained by means of the modules. A GPZ10-type nozzle used for scale removal was tested. Results obtained were presented and discussed.