Reciprocating wear behavior of WC-10Ni3Al cermet in contact with Ti6Al4V

Cermets based cutting tools remain widely used in machining processes for their wear resistance. WC-Ni3Al cermets are potential replacements of WC-Co cermets in titanium machining due to their superior mechanical and chemical properties, especially at elevated temperature. In present study the reciprocating sliding wear behavior of WC-10Ni3Al was investigated using a ball-on-flat tester, with the Ti6Al4V sphere as the counter-face material. Meanwhile, the diffusion test between WC-10Ni3Al cermet and Ti6Al4V was conducted for further study of the reciprocating sliding wear mechanisms of WC-10Ni3Al. The WC-8Co was utilized as the reference material. The experimental results show that WC-10Ni3Al has a higher wear resistance than WC-8Co, for all the examined contact loads. Adhesive wear is the main wear mechanism for both WC-10Ni3Al and WC-8Co. The severer adhesion and element diffusion leads to the serious wear of WC-8Co surface, while WC-10Ni3Al can maintain the lower wear due to its low chemical affinity and element diffusion with Ti6Al4V, even under the high contact load.