Research on Friction and Wear Behavior of Rubber in the Mixture of Crude Oil with Water

Abstract

In order to choose the rubber material and improve the service life of Progressing Cavity Pump (PCP ) when exploiting offshore crude oil, it is important to analyze friction and wear behaviour of stator and rotor of PCP in the mixture of crude oil with different water content. The friction and wear test about Nitrile -Butadiene Rubber (NBR) and Fluorine Rubber (FKM) were carried on ring-on-block tester, the wear loss was observed by electron microscope, the wear mechanism was also discussed. The results show that: (1) FKM owns better wearing resistance than NBR in the mixture of crude oil with different water content; (2) when the content of water in the mixture is less than 26%, the frictional coefficient of sample is 0.05, due to the oil film between the friction pairs; (3) when the content of water in the mixture is more than 26%, the frictional coefficient increases to 0.4, because of the water film between the friction pairs.

Transitions of Wear Characteristics for Rubber/Steel Seal Pairs During the Abrasive Wear Process

“…In order to simplify, the current studies usually simulated the abrasive environment by xing hard particles in one of the contact surfaces or entraining hard particles with single sizes into the contact zone by a rotating rubber wheel according to ASTM standard [18,19]. In fact, such abrasives are not xed, but may move freely between the sealing interface [20][21][22][23].…”