Towards a Fracture Energy Based Approach for Wear Prediction of WC-Co Tools in Industrial Cold Heading Process

Abstract

Tools sustainability and reliability is a key axis for economic competitiveness of companies in the field of cold heading of steels. This durability is currently limited by the damage occurring at the contact surfaces.The main objective of this study is to propose an energy based approach to understand the mechanisms of deterioration of the WC-Co carbide tools.Firstly a finite element simulation of an industrial cold heading process is run in order to identify the contact condition at the tool workpiece interface. Main results are the stress, strain and temperature distributions in the near surface of the tools. A particular attention is paid to the location of critical areas that may limit the tool life.Jointly, characterizations of the morphology of the worn surfaces are performed. SEM observations added to EDS and roughness measurements are done from midlife to end of life of industrial tools. Friction tests are performed with the Upsetting-Sliding Test involving contactors extracted from real worn tools to identify friction coefficients in order to provide the evolution of the friction coefficient according to the wear state of the tools. Finally, the correlation between the numerical analysis and the experimental measurement is discussed to attest to the relevance of the energy fracture based model to explain the deterioration of the tribological conditions.