Investigating the erosive wear caused by dry-ice blasting in paint stripping process

•Dry-ice blasting (DIB) application.•Stripping efficiency of an organic coating (paint)•Erosive wear damage on steel surface. Dry-ice blasting (DIB) has been widely used in the industry for several applications. However, its erosive effect on surfaces has not been studied deeply. This work aims to study the efficiency of DIB for stripping organic coatings (paints) on steel surfaces and its corresponding erosive damage as generated by different jet angles. In addition, the surface cooling during DIB was analyzed to get a deeper understanding of its influence on erosion wear mechanisms. The results have shown that the stripping efficiency increased with the increase of jet impact angle exhibiting minor evidence of surface damage in form of micro craters. In addition, it was observed that surface cooling could be reduced by increasing the initial temperature of the sample and reducing impact angles (i.e., 30°). Finally, it was found that the erosive wear mechanism of DIB is controlled by the ductile–brittle transition of the surface by undercooling caused by DIB.