Laser cladding coating against erosion-corrosion wear and its application to mining machine parts

Abstract

Erosion-corrosion wear is a common failure type for many mining machine parts. This paper introduces the erosion-corrosion wear resistant, nickel based alloy coating, which is manufactured onto AISI 1045 steel by laser cladding technology. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and microhardness testing were used to investigate the microstructure and hardness of the coaring. After that, erosion-corrosion wear experiments were carried out on an MSH type erosion-corrosion wear tester to study the erosion-corrosion wear characteristics of the laser clad coating. 420 stainless steel was also tested under the same conditions as a contrast specimen. The slurry was made up of water and quartz, while sulphuric acid was added to create corrosive condition. Experiments were arranged to test the relation between erosion-corrosion wear rate, the acid concentration and slurry erosion speed. Finally this paper introduces the application of laser cladding technology to balance plates of slurry pumps used in underground mining.