Wear Properties of Nitride-Bonded Silicon Carbide under the Action of an Abrasive Soil Mass

Nitride-bonded silicon carbide is an alternative to steels resistant to abrasive wear. This paper presents the results of a nitride-bonded silicon carbide (SiC) wear test in diverse soil conditions. The test was performed on a “spinning bowl” test stand on three soil types: loamy sand, light loam and ordinary loam. The results were referred to the wear test for materials used to make parts working soil mass, i.e., abrasive wear-resistant steel, boron steel and C + Cr + Nb padding weld. The abrasive wear resistance of silicon carbide was shown to depend on the grain size distribution of the soil being worked. Silicon carbide showed the highest resistance in light soil. However, the padding weld showed higher wear resistance in the other soil conditions. Nitride-bonded silicon carbide had higher wear resistance than the steels under study in all of the soils. These findings are supplemented by an analysis of the condition of the worked surfaces after friction tests. The dominant wear methods in all abrasive masses were micro-cutting and furrowing.