Cavitation occurrence in hydroabrasive flows which can lead to rather complex phenomena and complicate the understanding of the process essence is considered in the paper. To date, the wear of operating units in centrifugal and axial pumps, depending on the mode of their operation, has not been sufficiently studied and the methods to choose the operating modes considering the wear of their parts have not been developed. The paper presents the results of comprehensive laboratory and field studies on the wear rate of units in the flow part of centrifugal and axial pumps. An alternating pulsating load leads to an increase in the interaction force of the hydroabrasive flow with the chamber surface and by 10% increases its wear, reducing the pumping device productivity to 9%
