Miller number

Miller number – Mineral Ore Abrasivity

Investigation of ore abrasivity and/or alloy design to increase wear resistance.

The challenge

Determine nickel laterite ore abrasivity (client)
Determine Miller number for PTA deposited hardfacing (CSIRO)

Bureau Veritas Minerals provides consulting services for mineral resources sectors in many areas.  One of their projects was to determine the Miller (mineral abrasivity) numbers for a range nickel laterite ores.  The Miller number is important for the design engineers to predict operational reliability of mineral processing plants.

This test equipment has been used to determine wear resistance of PTA deposited alloys for CSIRO internal use. This work led to the development of new wear resistant alloys for slurry pump applications.

Our response

Miller or SAR (slurry abrasivity responses) number.

CSIRO Durability research laboratory includes many wear testing equipment and Miller testing machine is one of them, and it does the testing in accordance with ASTM G75.  Standard metallic samples were used to determine the abrasivity responses for many nickel laterite ores that client supplied.
It has also been used to develop new alloys internally.  The plasma transferred arc (PTA) deposited alloys were tested to compare with commercially available alloys, and helped steer our research direction to develop new alloys with low Miller number which is an indication of high wear resistant alloy.

The results

Determination of Miller number for nickel laterite ores.
Client data had limited use for us since they deal with various minerals for a specific alloy tools or plant.  However, the data for our alloy samples was highly useful to design alloy compositions for increased wear resistance.