Drawbacks of Traditional Wear-Resistant Materials
In fact, ferrous materials have long been common wear-resistant options, with manganese steel, white cast iron, and alloy steel being several widely used varieties. However, these materials do come with certain drawbacks. For instance, austenitic manganese steel boasts excellent toughness but is rather difficult to machine. Plain white cast iron and low-alloy white cast iron offer good hardness and wear resistance yet suffer from high brittleness, limiting them to applications involving only light loads. While medium-alloy and high-alloy white cast iron have overcome the issue of high brittleness, they are associated with significantly higher production costs.
Wear, corrosion and fracture are the primary causes of equipment component failure, which widely occur in sectors such as metallurgy, construction, electric power and machinery. Among these factors, wear exerts the most severe impact on components. Especially for transportation equipment, material wear accounts for approximately 80% of component failure cases, where traditional wear-resistant materials are no longer able to meet the service requirements under harsh working conditions.
In the 1980s, several wear-resistant ceramic materials such as borides, carbides and nitrides gradually emerged, after which countries around the world invested substantial resources in relevant research. With the deepening of research, these new-type wear-resistant ceramic materials have been increasingly widely applied in industrial equipment and pipelines due to their excellent performance. By replacing conventional metal materials, they have significantly improved equipment service life and continuous operation capacity.
Properties and characteristics of wear-resistant industrial ceramics
Industrial ceramic materials have secured a prominent position in the wear-resistant sector, mainly due to the following key properties and characteristics:
(1) High hardness and strength;
(2) Excellent wear resistance and long service life. Tests have shown that its wear resistance is 180 times that of manganese steel and 118 times that of high-chromium cast steel.
(3) High impact resistance;
(4) High temperature resistance. Firm bonding and excellent heat resistance;
(5) Light weight. The density of wear-resistant ceramics is approximately 3.6 g/cm³, only half that of steel and iron, which can significantly reduce the equipment load.
(6) Wide Application Range and Strong AdaptabilityIndustrial ceramic materials of different types can be selected according to specific requirements for all wear-intensive mechanical equipment in systems such as pulverizing, coal preparation, material conveying, ash discharge and dust removal, which are widely used in enterprises including thermal power plants, steel mills, smelters, mines and cement plants.
Classification of wear-resistant industrial ceramics
Classified by material, common wear-resistant industrial ceramic materials mainly include oxide ceramics, carbide ceramics and nitride ceramics.
(1) Oxide Wear-resistant Industrial Ceramics
Among materials for manufacturing wear-resistant components, alumina ceramics stand out as a typical representative of wear-resistant industrial ceramic materials. Thanks to their high hardness, excellent chemical stability and outstanding wear resistance, alumina ceramics are widely used in sectors such as metallurgy, petrochemicals and aerospace. However, their relatively low fracture toughness and poor thermal shock resistance have restricted their applications in industrial fields, especially those with stringent requirements for the mechanical properties of materials. Introducing a certain amount of other compounds into alumina ceramics can effectively enhance their toughness, thereby further improving their wear resistance. For this reason, alumina matrix composite ceramics have become a major research and development direction at present.
(2) Nitride wear-resistant ceramics
Nitride ceramics have a relatively late start and did not experience rapid development until the 1970s. Almost all of them are produced via artificial synthesis. In addition to featuring high strength and high hardness, they also exhibit excellent electrical and thermal properties. After decades of development, nitride ceramics such as silicon nitride, aluminum nitride and boron nitride have been widely used as high-strength mechanical components, corrosion-resistant components and wear-resistant parts in sectors including aerospace, machinery and metallurgy.
(3) Carbide wear-resistant ceramic
Boron carbide ceramics exhibit extremely stable chemical properties, and their hardness is second only to that of diamond and cubic boron nitride (CBN), making them excellent wear-resistant or anti-friction materials with broad application prospects in abrasives, bearings, sealing rings and cutting tools. However, the tribological properties of B₄C ceramics are greatly affected by temperature, load, friction speed and friction pair materials, so working conditions and environmental factors must be fully taken into account in practical applications.
