Abrasive Wear Property Of Newly Developed Tungsten Carbide Rods Reinforced Wear Resistant Composite Material

Ferro-based wear resistant composite with cemented carbide reinfo Rced has high wear resistance and toughness, which can greatly improve the service life of the parts.Austempered Ductile Iron(ADI) based wear resistant composite reinfoRced with WC-Co cemented carbide rods was developed by evaporative pattern casting(EPC) process. The interfacial microstructure between the cemented carbide rods and the iron matrix, as well as the abrasive wear behavior of the composite was investigated.Chemical composition of the base metal was designed with C3.6%, Si2.5%, Mn0.3%, Cu0.7%, Ni1.2%, Mo0.3%. The metal was inoculated by 75Si-Fe and spheroidized by Re-Mg to make spheroidal graphite cast iron(SGI), and then prepared the ADI by using austempering process. Chemical composition of the cemented carbide WC92%, Co8%. The phase of the interface and element diffusion were investigated with X-ray diffraction(XRD), Scanning electron microscopy(SEM) and energy spectrum analyzer(EDS), and measured the micro hardness of the composites. The abrasive wear behavior of composites were investigated by using SUGA abrasive wear tester, and the wear surface morphology and the wear mechanism were analyzed.It is found that owing to the surface layer dissolution of the cemented carbide rods and the counter-diffusion of W, Fe, C, Co, a transition layer about 370 μm in thickness was formed in the interface resulting in metallurgical bonding of the rods and base metal. The result of abrasive wear tests show that the wear resistance of ADI based composite gets 1.4 times of SGI based composite, 2 times of ADI and 3 times of SGI due to the high hardness of the reinfoRcement and the excellent metallurgical bonding between the reinfoRcement and the base metal, which leads to protection effect on the matrix during wear process. Secondly, analysis showed that from SGI to ADI, the contribution rate of the base metal to the anti-wear performance was 50.3%. From SGI to SGI based composite, the contribution rate of the reinfo Rcement to the anti-wear performance was 58.4%, and ADI to ADI based composite, the contribution rate of the reinfoRcement was 59.5%(similar with the contribution rate of the SGI to SGI based composite). SGI to ADI based composite, the mutual contribution rate of the base metal and the reinfoRcement was 79.9%, the anti-wear performance of ADI based composite was the best.Therefore, the experimental results indicate that for the ADI based wear resistant composite, the reinfoRcement protects base metal from wearing and the base metal effectively supports the reinfoRcement, this two collaborative effects are resistant to the wear to meet some serious wear condition. Accordingly, this would be extremely significance and has meaningful practical application if ADI based wear resistant composite can be applied to the industrial environments, such as jaw plate, lining board and the excavator bucket teeth.