Precipitation Process of TIC in Low Alloy Martensitic Steel and Its Effect on Wear Resistance

Traditional low-alloy martensitic steel is widely used as wear-resistant steel parts. But the contradiction between hardness and processing as well as welding performance is prominent,which limits the development of wear resistance. Titanium carbide is often used in industrial production as a metal-based wear-resistant phase, which is an inexpensive reinforcement that contributes to excellent overall performance. In this paper, a series of low-alloy martensitic steel sheets with same hardness grade and different Ti content of 0 wt%, 0.2 wt%, 0.3 wt%, 0.4 wt%, 0.5 wt% and 0.7 wt% are designed, respectively. The morphology and distribution of TiC precipitates in steel were characterized by OM, SEM, TEM and EPMA. The wear resistance was studied by wet sand semi-free abrasive wear test, and three modes of interaction between TiC particles and abrasives during wear process were summarized. The thermodynamic calculation was used to help explain the solidification precipitation process of titanium carbide particles.