Prediction of tumbling mill liner wear: Abrasion and impact effects

Liner wear occurs during the grinding process in tumbling mill. It has a significant influence on the overall economic performance of mills. It will be worthwhile to know the effect of mill operating parameters on the liner wear intensity. In the present work, an experimental-theoretical procedure is presented for evaluation of the liner wear due to abrasion and impact. A wear tester is used to measure the wear of specimen due to ball impacts. A relation is then extracted which gives the wear of specimen at the different impact conditions. This relation is used to evaluate the impact liner wear. Abrasion liner wear is evaluated using the procedure suggested by Radziszewski. To have the experimental data, a laboratory mill is used. A small specimen is inserted in the liner face of the laboratory mill to measure its wear during the mill operation. The cataract regime in mill is eliminated by a mechanism to measure the impact and abrasion wear separately. The comparisons show the appropriate accordance of predicted and measured liner wear, so the model can be used to determine the impact and abrasion wear portions of mill liners.