Particle Motion Behavior and Erosion Wear Mechanisms in a Mining Pump Under Slurry Transport Condition

With the rapid depletion of terrestrial mineral resources, the global demand for deep-sea mineral resource exploitation has become increasingly urgent. The hydraulic lifting system centered on deep-sea mining pumps is internationally recognized as the most commercially viable deep-sea mining system. In this paper, a deep-sea mining pump is taken as the research object, and the flow and wear characteristics of solid–liquid multiphase transport within the pump are investigated. Results show that as particle concentration increases, the non-uniformity of pressure and velocity distributions in the impeller flow channel also increases, indicating that particle-induced disturbances significantly compromise flow field uniformity. As the particle diameter increases, the wear dead angle area continues to expand, and the wear patterns and extents on each surface of the impeller and guide vane differ significantly. The particle collision frequency, particle kinetic energy, flow field structure, and shielding effects collectively influence the variation in wear amount.