Abstract
The tribological behavior of hot-rolled and boronized Fe40Mn20Cr20Ni20 high-entropy alloys (HEAs) sliding against a Si3N4 ball was investigated in the air, deionized water and seawater. The results showed that the hot-rolled Fe40Mn20Cr20Ni20 HEA was composed of an FCC (face-centered cubic) phase. In addition, the boronized HEA was composed of a great number of borides, including CrB, FeB, MnB, Fe2B, Fe3B and MnB2. The hardness increased from 139 HV to 970 HV after boronizing. In air, the wear rate decreased from 4.51 × 10−4 mm3/Nm to 0.72 × 10−4 mm3/Nm after boronizing. The wear mechanism transformed from abrasive wear and oxidative wear to the polishing effect. After boronizing, in the deionized water, the wear rate decreased from 1.27 × 10−4 mm3/Nm to 8.43 × 10−5 mm3/Nm. The wear mechanism transformed from abrasive wear and delamination wear to delamination wear. In the seawater, the wear rate decreased by about ten times that of hot-rolled alloy.
Highlights
This kind of alloy tends to form simple solid solutions rather than complex intermetallic compounds, which is mainly attributed to the high-entropy effect, such as face-centered cubic (FCC), body-centered cubic (BCC) or hexagonal close-packed (HCP) solid solutions [6,7,8,9]
The results showed that the wear rate under dry conditions decreased from 1.02 × 10-4 mm3 /Nm to 0.55 × 10−4 mm3 /Nm as the boronization time increased from 2 h to 8 h
It can be observed that all the diffraction peaks of the hot-rolled Fe40 Mn20 Cr20 Ni20 alloy are a single FCC solid solution, and no intermetallic compounds formed
Summary
Different from traditional alloys, HEAs contain five or more principal elements, and the concentration of each principal element is between 5 at.% and 35 at.% [2,3,4,5]. This kind of alloy tends to form simple solid solutions rather than complex intermetallic compounds, which is mainly attributed to the high-entropy effect, such as face-centered cubic (FCC), body-centered cubic (BCC) or hexagonal close-packed (HCP) solid solutions [6,7,8,9]. HEAs possess a great number of excellent performances, such as high strength and hardness and excellent corrosion resistance and wear resistance as well as improved damage tolerances [3,10,11,12,13,14,15]
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