Wear prevention & control as a preventive maintenance strategy

Abstract

The engineering systems for iron and steel production in an integrated steel company are composed of multitudes of complex machineries and components for handling and transfer of large volume of aggressive raw material and intermediate products. This leads to abrasion, wear and other service induced degradation of components and machineries resulting in huge losses owing to decreased component service life, production losses, energy losses and increased maintenance cost. This inevitably requires systematic approach towards a productive maintenance strategy in order to prevent frequent failures of machineries and components adding to the operating costs and consuming more resources. Wear prevention and control through judicious selection and use of superior materials for machineries components have received greater attentions in recent times as a solution to the maintenance problems. The present paper highlights various types of wear encountered in steel processing industries, the metallurgical factors influencing wear and the strategy/ techniques to prevent it. This also includes field examples of such an attempt towards selection guidelines and their uses for wear prone components. The successful applications of some of the wear resistant materials, such as, high-Cr iron alloys, tool and alloy steels, etc.; for some of the wear prone components, such as, protective liners for material handling systems for coke and sinter, knives for shearing and chopping applications for steel strips and sheets, steel mill rolls, etc; have been enumerated.