In oil and gas production erosion corrosion at components with reduced flow diameters, like
gravel packs, nozzles, and Christmas trees. is causing serious problems. Production rates are
often limited by critical fluid velocities which in most cases are unknown. Those critical fluid
velocities (erosion corrosion breakaway velocities) are reported rarely in literature especially
for highly alloyed materials. Reasons are on the one hand that determination of such velocities
is experimentally highly sophisticated when avoiding destruction of the testing facility. On the
other hand, conventional erosion corrosion testing facilities (rotating cylinders, discs, etc.)
supply in many cases poorly defined conditions especially with respect to flow velocity. Most
erosion corrosion tests are therefore done at low flow velocities below 10 m/s which do not
sufficiently attack corrosion resistant alloys.