Continuous medium hypothesis-based study on the screw flight wear model and wear regularity in a screw ship unloader

Screw flight on a vertical screw conveyor, which is a spiral blade welded on an axial cylinder, is the core component of a screw ship unloader and can be seriously worn by the materials during long-term conveying. Damaged screw flights make the screw ship unloader unable to unload materials or even lead to an accident. Hence, we established a new screw flight wear model based on the Archard wear model and continuous medium hypothesis. Two influencing factors, speed and filling rate, were selected to study the wear law of the screw flight, and the wear law was verified experimentally. The results indicate that the experimental results were consistent with the calculation model. The wear rate of the screw flight was approximately parabola-increased with the increase in rotational speed, and the screw flight wear rate positively and linearly correlated with the filling rate.