b'Sliding wear rate is not linear with time; the sharp blade tip wears fastest at the start of its service.Figure 7. Wear rate across different furnish and grades, Softcrepe.We also made important classificationsa range of lifetimes, as here for the mostpreferred, with reference to the quality of the Yankee coating layer.A widepopular BTG Softcrepe blade (figureand productivity impacts of blade variety of coating products are available,5).This depicts lifetime across allwear as explained earlier.However, so we classified these as A for premiumconditions, so for the rest of the study,BTG engineers a range of blade fully crosslinked or blended products,we choose the median value, whichperformances to suit different quality B for the most common modified PAEhere is 4.65m/100km compared withand asset protection needs. (polyamine-epichlorohydrin) and Caverage wear rate of 5.11m/100km. For example, different furnishes and for basic PAE type.We also askedgrades will express blade wear quite the BTG field support to classify theNote also that sliding wear rate is notdifferently. (figure 7).coating visual appearance as white/ linear with time, the sharp blade tip contaminated, streaky or grey/ wears fastest at the start of its service. One might expect to see a high wear uniform/translucentrate for RCF industrial wipes, an The material type is also influential onabrasive furnish, but virgin hankies?All customer identifiers were stripped aswear rate, as depicted in this chartHowever, this is often aggressively we compiled the database. (figure 6). creped for softness on a slightly harder and thinner coating to minimise bulk KEY RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A steel blade has a far higher weargeneration and so wear is higher.Virgin This study mostly concerned BTG highrate than all high-performance blades,kitchen towel, where there will be a lot performance crepe blades, in ceramicover 100m/100km compared toof wet strength resin forming a natural or cermet (carbide) material.No blade7m/100km. This alone explains whycoating on the Yankee has the lowest has a fixed life, instead they will presenthigh-performance blades are oftenwear rate - again no surprise. TISSUE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL41'