Three-body abrasive wear of cermets

► Three-body abrasive wear mechanisms of different cermets are similar. ► Wear mechanism depends mainly on material/abrasive hardness ratio. ► Low load and H a < H m – the dominating wear mechanism is contact fatigue. ► High load, H a > H m – surface plastic deformation leads to fracturing and pullout of carbide grains. The present paper is focused on three-body abrasive wear of cermets on the base of tungsten, titanium and chromium carbides with different contents of binder phase. A series of samples of different cermets was tested using a block-on-ring test machine by the method of ASTM B611 using normal loads of 40 and 200 N. Silica sand was used as the abrasive. The wear resistance of TiC–NiMo and Cr 3C 2–Ni cermets was compared with WC–Co based hardmetals. The volume wear of the cermets decreases with the increase of carbide content in the composites, which corresponds to an increase in the bulk hardness. The volume abrasive wear of the cermets increases approximately linearly with the sliding distance. The wear tracks of the worn compositions blocks abraded at low-load and high-load conditions were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Abrasive wear mechanisms are similar for different cermets, depending mainly on the material/abrasive relative hardness and loading value.