Three-body abrasive wear behaviors and mechanism analysis of Fe-B-C cast alloys with various Mn contents

Fe-B-C cast alloy shows the superior two-body abrasive wear resistance, regarded as the potential candidate for high chromium cast iron. In the present work, the three-body abrasive wear behaviors of Fe-B-C cast alloys with variant Mn addition have been systematically investigated. The results show that, appropriate Mn addition can improve the fracture toughness of M2B hard phase by affecting the crystal structure, but hardly sacrifice the hardness. Fe-B-C alloy with 2.0 wt.% Mn has the best three-body wear resistance under different applied loads. Microcutting, microploughing and surface fatigue are the predominantly surface damage forms. Improving the toughness of M2B can inhibit the cracking behaviors on the wear surface and the subsurface so as to improve the wear resistance. With the increase of the wear load, the microcutting gradually intensifies to cause more severe material removal; simultaneously, silica abrasive can be seriously cracked into small size so that the wear surface appears smoother under the higher wear load. On the whole, improving the toughness of M2B is the effective way to optimize the three-body abrasive wear resistance of Fe-B-C alloy. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.