Cormet’s Customer develops and manufactures drilling mud motors for oil and gas drilling purposes. The operation environment in a mud motor very aggressive due to the high operation temperature, corrosive environment and high wear between the rotating and static parts.
Cormet has built a disc-on-disc tribocorrosion instrument for the simulation of the mud motor environment. The instrument is used as a R&D tool for the development better alloys, inhibitors and material combinations for mud drilling motors.
The instrument sensor head consists of two rotating discs that are immersed in a simulated operation environment formed of liquid and solid particles. The discs are rotated independently using two VFD’s. The load between the discs is controlled and monitored on-line. The power consumption is monitored using torque sensors. The testing cell temperature is controlled but obviously is normally strongly cooled due to the friction heat created by the contacting discs.
The corrosion rate is determined by measuring the disc wear either with micrometer or with weight loss method.