Erosion Damage to Impeller of Welding Fume Extraction System

Abstract

Even very simple cases of component failure can represent an enrichment for this section Failure Analysis. Besides the instructive value of an easily understandable content, they allow those failure analysts becoming acquainted with the field to gradually get to know the most important material-related mechanisms governing component failure cases. A look back by the authors on the section Failure Analysis of Practical Metallography cases revealed only one single erosion failure case in the past 10 years. It won't therefore do any harm to address this interesting failure mechanism once again. The erosion failure of a fan impeller presented in this article was very easily solved However, it was rather unexpected. Who would have considered it possible that an air extraction system in a factory workshop is subject to such high erosive distress? Hence, the main message of this short article is that the experts tasked with investigating the component failures should be very thorough and propose all sorts of damage hypotheses, sometimes even those which, at first glance, appear unlikely, and may only reject them when the examination results indicate the contrary.