Research on wear behavior of ATC cermet material

By electroless chemical deposition process, a layer of metal cobalt film was coated on the surface of nano-ceramic powders of Al2O3 and TiC. The mixture of the two kinds of Co-coated power (about 70wt.% Al2O3-Co+30wt.%TiC-Co) was hot-pressed into ATC (Al2O3-TiC-Co8wt%) cermet samples. The wear test was carried out under dry sliding wear condition by the pin-on-disk rig. The volume-loss of the samples in three sliding pairs, ATC/Steel, ATC/SiC and ATC/artificial diamond (AD) were investigated. The wear morphologies were examined by SEM. The wear-resistance between ATC cermet and Co-cemented WC were compared. The results show that the effect of fracture toughness is better than that of hardness to the wear resistance of high hardness materials. The wear mechanisms of ATC cermet samples were found that abrasion predominated in the wear process. The wear surface of ATC cermet samples became smoother with fine asperities spalling off and the volume loss was decreased.