Investigation on two-body abrasive wear behavior and mechanism of Fe-3.0 wt% B cast alloy with different chromium content

Effect of chromium content on two-body wear behavior of Fe-3.0 wt% B cast alloy was investigated. The wear mechanism with different abrasive, associating with Fe2B toughness, was discussed in the present study. The results indicate, solidification microstructures of the alloy are composed of ferrite, pearlite and eutectic boride, and the heat treated microstructures comprise of martensite and eutectic boride. With chromium content increasing, chromium concentration in boride is 3.82 times higher than that in matrix; microhardness of boride and hardness of the alloy change little, while toughness of boride increases first and then decreases. During two-body wear test, wear weight losses with SiC abrasive are generally higher than those with SiO2 abrasive. With Cr content increasing in the alloy, on condition of SiO2 abrasive, the wear resistance increases first and then decreases, possessing the same trend as the toughness of boride; with SiC abrasive, wear resistance changes in a way similar to that with SiO2 abrasive, except that wear resistance under contact load of 55N increases sharply and then keeps nearly constant. Wear results show that toughness of boride is the main factor to influence wear resistance of Fe-3.0 B cast alloy. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.