Abrasive wear protection in material handling: Mechanism-based combination of lab-experiments for optimal material selection

Material processing of loose goods can be found ubiquitously in heavy industries such as steel production. In transportation, relocation or other processing routines of raw materials severe and manifold abrasive loads attack wear protection materials. As often plant engineers are not aware of the prevailing loads and wear mechanisms, the material choice might be suboptimal. Therefore, the objectives of this work were to identify wear mechanisms for several distinct applications and evaluate the suitability of applied wear solutions. Various forms of abrasive and impact-abrasive wear were simulated in lab experiments. A variation of ten common wear protection materials consisting of martensitic steels and hardfacings was applied in standard abrasion testing, in adapted high stress situations as well as in impact-abrasion testing. For the latter six original abrasives from field applications were utilized and their severity classified. Based on the wear results an application-oriented combination of the quantitative results was used for a qualified selection map of most favorable wear protection solutions for specific load conditions representative of certain wear components. By these selection maps a knowledge-based choice for wear protection solutions is provided, enabling wear resistance optimization and thereby increasing sustainability in material handling.