The steel wheel abrasion test (SWAT): A tool to study wear, friction and ore breakage in the mining industry

Developed from the rubber wheel abrasion standard test, the steel wheel abrasion test (SWAT) illustrates a simple highly controllable testing environment that produces repeatable results for studies of material wear, friction in wear and ore breakage during wear. The wear and friction results can be tied to equipment models such as those of mill charge motion to predict wear of both steel media and liner. The ore breakage results have the potential to be correlated to typical ore breakage tests such as the lab tumbling mill or the drop weight test. In this paper, the methodology used to avoid “highly anomalous results due to differential friction” is presented. It is shown that the proposed methodology leads to repeatable results for sample wear, friction and ore breakage. Wear, friction and breakage results from a selection of ore and steel media tests are presented. Further, steel media wear estimates are presented and compared with industrial mill reality.