Relating Solid Contaminant Particle Size Distribution to Flow Degradation in Hydraulic Pumps

Power hydraulic pump wear is difficult to quantify. Measuring the actual material lost due to wear is impossible in a practical sense. An available simulated procedure is the contaminated sensitivity performance test which measures flow degradation with increasing amounts of contamination in the fluid. It is shown that wear can be related to flow degradation and knowing the mass of contamination causing wear, models for pump wear can be explored. An approach to calculating damaging contaminant mass from particle size distribution is given.