What Are the Factors Affecting Abrasives' Wear?

Abrasives are known as the "industrial teeth" which are commonly used as machining tools for parts that need mechanical processing with abrasives or grinding tools, and to meet certain technical requirements.

Mechanism of Abrasives' Wear

When the abrasives move relative to the part surface, the abrasive forces can be divided into forces perpendicular to the surface and forces parallel to the surface.

• The force perpendicular to the surface causes the abrasive to embed in the surface, producing a large number of dense grooves on the surface of a good plastic material, which will eventually cause fatigue and damage after repeated action. For brittle materials, the surface does not change, but it still produces brittle damage.

• The force parallel to the surface makes the abrasives tangential motion, which leads to surface scratching and cutting into grooves. For plastic materials, the abrasive cutting will cut a chip off at the frictional surface. For brittle materials, the abrasive cutting will cut off many chips from the surface at once. Abrasive wear is a major form of destruction for many machinery and equipment, and the wear speed is very high.

Factors Affecting Abrasives' Wear

The effect of abrasives' particle size on wear

The wear of metals increases with the size of abrasive particles. When the particle size of abrasives increases to a certain size, the wear rate remains constant.

The effect of abrasives' geometry on wear

Abrasive particles with sharp corners and edges have a higher wear rate than smooth abrasives. After being worn out, the wear rate decreases; but if the abrasive particles are shattered, the wear rate will increase again.

The effect of abrasives' hardness on wear

• When the abrasives' hardness is lower than the part hardness, the wear rate is related to the difference between the two hardnesses. The larger the difference, the lower the wear rate.

  
  

• When the abrasives' hardness is slightly higher than the part hardness, the wear is severe. The smaller the difference in hardness, the smaller the wear.

Therefore, surface strengthening methods can be used to increase the hardness of parts to be equal or greater than the abrasive hardness to improve the wear resistance of parts. However, materials with high hardness can lead to decreased toughness and increased brittleness.

The effect of pressure on abrasives'wear

For abrasive wear, the wear rate is proportional to the pressure. For parts made of the same material, if the pressure is reduced by half, the service life will be doubled.

Measures to Reduce Abrasives' Wear

Reduce abrasives' entry

Configure various filters, increase dust-proof sealing devices, install magnetic separators, chip collection rooms and oil pollution degree indicators, frequently clean and replace air, fuel and oil filter devices.

Enhance the wear resistance of abrasives' parts

Improve the properties of parts materials with heat treatment and surface treatment, increase surface hardness, and try to make the surface hardness higher than the abrasive hardness.

Choose materials with good wear resistance

The use of medium carbon steel quenched and low-temperature tempered steel to obtain Martensitic steel can make parts not only wear-resistant, but also have good toughness.