High chromium cast iron(HCCI) is taken as material of coal water slurry pump impeller, but it is susceptible to produce serious abrasive wear and erosion wear because of souring of hard coal particles. The research on optimization of heat treatments to improve abrasive wear properties of HCCI is insufficient, so effect of heat treatments on the microstructure, hardness, toughness, and wear resistance of Cr26 HCCI is investigated to determine the optimal heat treatment process for HCCI. A series of heat treatments are employed. The microstructures of HCCI specimens are examined by using optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The hardness and impact fracture toughness of as-cast and heat treated specimens are measured. The wear tests are assessed by a Type M200 ring-on block wear tester. The results show the following: With increase of the quenching temperature from 950 °C to 1050 °C, the hardness of Cr26 HCCI increased to a certain value, kept for a time and then decreased. The optimal heat treatment process is 2 h quenching treatment at 1000 °C, followed by a subsequent 2 h tempering at 400 °C. The hardness of HCCI is related to the precipitation and redissolution of secondary carbides in the process of heat treatment. The subsequent tempering treatment would result in a slight decrease of hardness but increase of toughness. The wear resistance is much related to the “supporting” effect of the matrix and the “protective” effect of the hard carbide embedded in the matrix, and the wear resistance is further dependent on the hardness and the toughness of the matrix. This research can provide an important insight on developing an optimized heat treatment method to improve the wear resistance of HCCI.

Local strain measurements are considered as an effective method for structural health monitoring of high-temperature components, which require accurate, reliable and durable sensors. To develop strain sensors that can be used in higher temperature environments, an improved metal-packaged strain sensor based on a regenerated fiber Bragg grating (RFBG) fabricated in hydrogen (H₂)-loaded boron–germanium (B–Ge) co-doped photosensitive fiber is developed using the process of combining magnetron sputtering and electroplating, addressing the limitation of mechanical strength degradation of silica optical fibers after annealing at a high temperature for regeneration. The regeneration characteristics of the RFBGs and the strain characteristics of the sensor are evaluated. Numerical simulation of the sensor is conducted using a three-dimensional finite element model. Anomalous decay behavior of two regeneration regimes is observed for the FBGs written in H₂-loaded B–Ge co-doped fiber. The strain sensor exhibits good linearity, stability and repeatability when exposed to constant high temperatures of up to 540 °C. A satisfactory agreement is obtained between the experimental and numerical results in strain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that the improved metal-packaged strain sensors based on RFBGs in H₂-loaded B–Ge co-doped fiber provide great potential for high-temperature applications by addressing the issues of mechanical integrity and packaging.

To accurately detect deformation and extend the component life beyond the original design limits, structural safety monitoring techniques have attracted considerable attention in the power and process industries for decades. In this paper an on-line monitoring system for high temperature pipes in a power plant is developed. The extension-based sensing devices are amounted on straight pipes, T-Joints and elbows of a main steam pipeline. During on-site monitoring for more than two years, most of the sensors worked reliably and steadily. However, the direct strain gauge could not work for long periods because of the high temperature environment. Moreover, it is found that the installation and connection of the extensometers can have a significant influence on the measurement results. The on-line monitoring system has a good alarming function which is demonstrated by detecting a steam leakage of the header.

CFX particle inhomogeneous model was introduced for the mechanism analysis of a centrifugal slurry pump which is equipped with back blades on impeller shrouds. Combining with the total efficiency correction, the simulation showed good prediction accuracy of external characteristics results compared with the experimental values. Vorticity and Q-Criterion were chosen as the variables to illustrate the abrasion morphology and wear mechanism by contrasting simulation result with worn impeller in engineering. The analysis showed that the large vorticity intensity areas are distributed at the edge of impeller shroud and intensively behind the back blades. Moreover, the vorticity scattered on suction surface of back blade shows the largest intensity. The contour of Q-Criterion demonstrated that the swirl scale in front cavity is obviously larger than that in back cavity. The distribution of vorticity on both front and back shrouds can reasonably explain the impeller wear characteristics. Finally, the forward curved back blade proved to be excellence performance in vorticity distribution.

A variety of signal processing algorithms have been proposed to detect and locate defects in plate-like structures. However, the signal-to-noise ratio in these algorithms is too small especially in the reflection wave from the boundary, which further degrades the accuracy of localization of defects. A novel method for localization of defects is proposed in this article, based on the direct wave and fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm. To verify its effectiveness, experiments using the parallel linear and circular array are conducted, respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed method not only accurately locates single defect but also locates double defects in plate-like structures, and by comparing with the current discrete elliptic imaging algorithm, its location error of single defect is reduced from 20–25 mm to 0–3 mm and double defects is also reduced from 60–90 mm to 0–3 mm.