Effects of pressure and counterbody hardness in the abrasive wear behavior of tool steels

Steels containing up to 1 wt% of carbon and 12 wt% of chromium have been used to protect the internal surface of rod mills in the cassiterite ore grinding mills. To simulate the wear behavior of this tribosystem, a test rig based on the lapping principle with counterbodies of AISI 1045 steel (160HV30) and a quenched and tempered high chromium white cast iron (751HV30) was selected. The abrasive particles were quartz sand with an average grain size of 150 μm. The results showed that using carbon steel as a counterbody and a test pressure of 0.40 MPa, the abrasive particles were embedded in the carbon steel leading to a sliding abrasive wear configuration. On the other hand, the use of a hard counterbody of high chromium white cast iron led to much less embedding and the rolling abrasive wear configuration prevailed. Using these parameters, no significant change in the wear rates of the studied steels could be observed. This suggests that the chromium content may be strongly reduced, and consequently the maintenance cost of this kind of mills.