Abstract
The last decade has witnessed considerable advancements in nanostructured material synthesis and property characterization. However, there still exists some deficiency in the mechanical and surface property characterization of these materials. In this paper, the erosion corrosion (E-C) behavior of nanostructured copper was studied. The nanostructured copper was produced through severe plastic deformation (SPD) by applying four passes of equal channel angular pressing (ECAP). The combined effects of the testing time, impact velocity, and concentration of erosive solid particles (i.e., sand concentration) on the E-C behavior of nanostructured copper were then examined. Based on a defined domain for the testing time, impact velocity, and sand concentration, E-C tests were performed for numerous combinations of test points via the slurry pot method. The test points were selected using the face-centered center composite design of experiments to enable visualization of the test results through surface plots. The extent of E-C on the test specimens was determined by measuring the mass loss. Polynomial regression and Kriging were used to fit surfaces to the experimental data, which were subsequently used to generate surface plots. The results showed that the E-C of nanostructured copper is best described by a quadratic function of testing time, velocity, and erosive solid particle concentration. The results also revealed that E-C increases with an increasing testing time, impact velocity, and erosive solid particle concentration. In addition, it was observed that the effect of the erosive solid particles on E-C is further intensified by an increased impact velocity.