Wear behaviour characterization of Ti6A14V-B₄C composites

Dry sliding wear behaviour is fundamentally regarded as an important way of detecting and analyzing the wear characteristics mainly in typical components in the manufacturing industry which has been found to correlate with both safety and cost effective. Thus, wear behaviours were carried out using ball-on-disc tribometer equipment called CETRUMT-2 which operates with linear reciprocating motion. Ball-on-disc test is regarded as one of the most common tests used to study and analyze the wear behaviour. Evaluating the wear volume, and the wear rate of respective samples, ball-ondisc tests were performed on the Universal Micro materials Tester (UMT-2), produced by Centre for Tribology, Inc. (CETR), USA. The wear tests were performed using a tungsten carbide ball of about 10 mm diameter with a constant stroke length of 2 mm together with application normal load of 25 N. The frequency for the reciprocating spindle was maintained at 5 Hz together with speed of 5 mm/s which was also maintained throughout the test. In this paper, the ball-on-disc was used for the investigation of the effects of normal load and hardness of Ti6A14V-B₄C composites on wear behaviour under dry and sliding conditions. The depths of the worn out section were analyzed from the surface of the sample. The analyzed depths were used to evaluate both wear volume, and wear rate using Archard's wear model equation. The sample produced at a laser power of 0.8 KW has the lowest wear volume, and wear rate with 35.2 x 10^-3 mm³ and 6.42 x 10^-4 mm³/Nm respectively, while the sample produced at 2.0 KW experienced the highest wear volume, and wear rate with 93.3 x 10^-3 mm³ and 26.2 x 10^-4 mm³/Nm respectively.