Abrasive wear behavior of NiAl and NiAl-TiB2 composites

Abrasive wear of NiAl and NiAl with 10, 20, and 40 vol.% TiB2 has been inve stigated using particles of different types and sizes. The addition of TiB2 as a particulate reinforcement to NiAl increases the hardness of the compo site with respect to NiAl, and reduces the wear rate at all volume fraction s on garnet and Al2O3 abrasives. Abrasion on SiC resulted in a minimum of t he wear rate for the composite with 20% TiB2 for most conditions. The compo site with 40% TiB2 consistently exhibited wear rates higher than the other composites when abraded on SiC. The only instance when the NiAl-40% TiB2 co mposite had a lower wear rate was when it was abraded on 16 and 37 mu m SiC particles. The NiAl-TiB2 composite serves as a model system for studying t he effect of reinforcement volume fraction on composite wear behavior and i s discussed in terms of a composite wear model developed by Axen and Jacobs on. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.