Effect of Solidification and Hot Rolling Processes on Wear Performance of TiC-Reinforced Wear-Resistant Steel

Xiangtao Deng,Zhaodong Wang,Qi Wang,Yi Cao,Long Huang

doi:10.3390/ma15030729

Abstract

As a commonly reinforcing phase in wear-resistant materials, TiC is often added into wear-resistant materials to improve the wear resistance. The independently developed stepped molds with variable thicknesses were used to prepare the TiC-reinforced steels with the same composition though melt solidification processing to study the effect of the solidification rate on the particle size and wear performance. The effect of the hot rolling compression ratio on the particle size and wear performance was also studied. The length and aspect ratios of the particles in heat-treated TiC-reinforced steels with different billet thicknesses and rolling compression ratios were measured. With the increasing in the billet thickness and the decreasing in the rolling compression ratio, the length and aspect ratio of the particles increased in heat-treated TiC-reinforced steels, and the hardness decreased slightly. The three-body abrasive wear behavior of the TiC-reinforced steels was conducted using a standard dry sand rubber wheel wear testing procedure, and the modeling of the wear mechanism was established. The particle size is the main factor affecting wear resistance when the hardness of TiC-reinforced steels is similar. When the particles size is moderate, about 2–6 μm, the particle can break the sand tip and hinder the sand tip from sliding on the surface. In this manner, the mass loss decreased and the wear resistance improved. The large particles will be broken easily by the abrasive, and the small particles are removed easily by the abrasive in the wear process. So, the large and small particles cannot effectively prevent the damage of the abrasive to the matrix, and they have less of an effect on improving wear resistance.

Highlights

Adding hard particles such as carbide [1], nitride, boride [2], or oxide [3] into wear-resistant materials can improve the wear resistance of the material without increasing the hardness.TiC is especially suitable for steel due to its high hardness (2859–3200 HV) [4], low density (≈4.93 g/cm3), high melting point (≈3430 K), and high wear resistance [5,6]
The two main production methods of particle-reinforced steels could be classified into solid state and molten/casting state methods
The TiC coating with high wear resistance can be obtained by laser cladding [17,18] or welding [19,20] on the surface of the material to achieve the purpose of protecting the material

Summary

Introduction

Adding hard particles such as carbide [1], nitride, boride [2], or oxide [3] into wear-resistant materials can improve the wear resistance of the material without increasing the hardness.TiC is especially suitable for steel due to its high hardness (2859–3200 HV) [4], low density (≈4.93 g/cm3), high melting point (≈3430 K), and high wear resistance [5,6]. The two main production methods of particle-reinforced steels could be classified into solid state (powder metallurgy [7], self-propagation high-temperature synthesis [8], mechanical alloying [9], and carbon-thermal reduction [10]) and molten/casting state methods The TiC coating with high wear resistance can be obtained by laser cladding [17,18] or welding [19,20] on the surface of the material to achieve the purpose of protecting the material. Thereinto, the advantage of the solid state and laser cladding or welding method is that the materials with high-volume fraction TiC can be prepared, but the disadvantages of the solid-state method are that the process is complex, the uniformity of TiC is poor, and it will have many defects.

Methods

Results

Conclusion