Solidification and sliding wear behavior of low-alloy abrasion-resistant steel reinforced with TiC particles

Low alloy abrasion resistant steel reinforced with self-generated TiC particles was developed to improve its wear performance without increasing its hardness. The solidification experiments were performed to study the effect of mass fraction of Ti and solidification rates on the size, content and distribution of micron-sized TiC particles. The sliding wear behavior of TiC-reinforced steels with different mass fractions of Ti that are produced at different solidification rates under different applied loads was studied using a dry sliding wear test machine. The results showed that the microstructure of the TiC-reinforced steels consisted of a martensite/bainite matrix and micron-sized TiC particles. With increasing of Ti mass fraction and the solidification rate, the number of the TiC particles increases. Under different applied loads, TiC-reinforced steels produced at a solidification rate of 3 °C/min exhibited the best sliding wear performance. The wear morphology and EDS maps indicated that the main wear mechanism of dry sliding wear for TiC-reinforced steels is oxidation wear and abrasive wear. The cross-section morphology of the wear surfaces revealed that the micron-sized particles can protect the matrix from wear and enhance the resistance of matrix to deformation.