Monday, 25 March 2013

The Evolution Of Abrasion Resistant Plate In Mining

By Ann Jordan


Mining and earth moving has happened to yield a lot of the most basic needs of man for several thousands of years. Moving earth crusts requires not only ground engagement implements but tooling that will allow workers to survive through the hostile environment underground. Improving the current approaches and materials in order to reduce downtime as well as component replacements has always been a struggle. One component known to have several applications in the field is the abrasion resistant plate.

Abrasion resistant plates may be made of varying types of materials. One of the materials on the far ends in terms of toughness is ceramics. They are usually able to provide great resistance against abrasion though, but still, they have very limited application in terms of heavy or even moderate impact. In addition, they are not weldable.

Another type that is considered by many are the cladded wear plates. They have similar characteristics to ceramics in terms of resistance to wear. The differences lie on their weldability which is similar to that of mild steel. They also are able to work well with moderate impact. These properties are what extend their component life, even reduce downtime.

Wear plates started out as materials that have been made out of construction steels. Nonetheless, these are often only able to resist marginal wear. Not only were they low on carbon, a principal hardener of steels, but they also utilized very little alloy. This lack in alloy can actually result to steels which are not hard enough beneath the surfaces. Only the material surfaces were able to resist fully abrasive environments.

The lack of alloy in plate materials did not only prevent thorough hardening, but also yielded steels that are not ductile in their hardened conditions. This has prevented significant shaping and forming for applications. Furthermore, it became clear that these types of steels may only be used for thin and simple shapes or sections.

A lot of metallurgists still exerted efforts in finding ways for how to battle all the inadequacies observed in the construction of steels. Many have thought about adding alloying elements which will help enhance steel hardness. They also utilized special methods in trying to control non-metallic size, volume and shape so ductility and impact will further be improved. Adding in titanium became popular as well, which induced carbonitride formation for better quality steels.

Although thoroughly hardened steels had a lot of applications that involve moderate impact, they still were not good enough for situations where low impact but severe abrasion is involved. Professionals decided that they needed a new product. They needed weldability and the resistance of high chromium casting.

The chemistries of chromium white iron produced wires and electrodes that are hardfacing. All that was left to do was clad surface areas of plates made from mild steel with these consumables. The end products are what they then referred to as cladded wear plates.

Hardness and microstructure are two of the most essential steel characteristics that can combat wear. Hardness is the direct outcome of steel microstructure and also the easiest to measure but is often used erroneously as a criteria for wear resistance. It is important to remember that one abrasion resistant plate can be as hard as another but they still can have varying resistance.




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