Abrasive and erosive wear behaviour of nanometric WC-12Co microwave clads

The present work examines the abrasive and the erosive wear performance of WC-12Co microwave clads. Cladding of micrometric and nanometric WC-12Co powders was carried out on austenitic stainless steel substrate using microwave hybrid heating technique. The micrometric clads exhibited the presence of skeleton structured carbides uniformly distributed in the metallic matrix. On the other hand, presence of clusters of nanocarbides was observed in the nanometric WC-12Co clads. The average microhardness of the nanometric (1564±53 HV) was approximately 1.37 times higher than the micrometric clad (1138±90 HV). A dry sand rubber wheel apparatus using silica sand as the abradant was used to evaluate the three body abrasive wear performance of the clads at various loads (30, 60 and 90 N). The erosive wear performance of the clads was evaluated at various impact angles (30°, 60° and 90°) using solid particle erosion using alumina as the erodent. Lower binder mean free path, higher microhardness and enhanced carbide volume fraction lead to the higher abrasive and erosive wear resistance of the nanometric WC-12Co clads.