Wear mechanisms in abrasion and erosion of WC/Co and related hardmetals

This paper describes observations of wear mechanisms made through examination of the surfaces of WC hardmetals samples tested in a number of different laboratory abrasion and erosion wear tests. The tests that were used included ASTM G65 and ASTM B611 abrasive tests, scratch testing at a range of different loads and with different indenter geometries, and gas blast erosion. Evaluation of the dependence of the magnitude of wear on hardmetal microstructural parameters such as WC grain size and binder phase content was also carried out. It was found that the best differentiation between materials was found when the results were plotted against the inverse square root of the WC grain size. Crown Copyright (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.