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Microstructural effects in abrasive wear. Quarterly progress report, 15 March 1978--15 June 1978

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6936453· OSTI ID:6936453

The objective of this research is to correlate abrasive wear with microstructure in a series of alloy white irons and a series of Co-base powder metallurgy (PM) alloys. Low-stress abrasion resistance has been found to increase in a general way with hardness, whereas gouging wear resistance has been found to correlate to a significantly lesser extent. For gouging wear in particular, increasing hardness, carbon and alloy content are inefficient means to increase wear resistance. The low-stress wear scar microtopography has been measured for each of the six alloys studied. In general, alloys with high wear resistance have smoother wear scars. The microstructures of the alloys, which consist of an array of M/sub 7/C/sub 3/ (and in some cases M/sub 7/C/sub 3/ + M/sub 6/C) carbides in a FCC Co-base matrix, have been characterized by conventional optical and quantitative metallographic techniques. Both low stress and gouging wear resistance pass through a maximum at intermediate carbide volume fractions. This gives quantitative evidence of the inefficiency of excessive alloying to generate wear resistance. It suggests that for these alloys low-stress and gouging abrasion may be covered by common flow-fracture phenomena.

Research Organization:
Notre Dame Univ., South Bend, IN (USA). Dept. of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
OSTI ID:
6936453
Report Number(s):
COO-4246-5
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English