Erosion by solid particle impingement : experimental results with cast-iron, laser-treated surfaces.

The surfaces of cast-iron specimens have been modified by CO2 laser processing in order to enhance their hardness, providing different surfaces for wear behaviour studies. Various laser heat treatmentswere performed in order to generate distinctmicrostruc- tures. Based on previous tests, interaction time and power density usedwere 0.5 s and 0.4 kW/mm2, respectively. Alloyingwith pure Cr allowed microstructure and the chemical composition of the material to be modified in order to attain the desired properties. Chromium^iron carbides, (Cr,Fe)7C3, formed ``in situ'', during laser surface melting, by reaction with carbon of the cast iron, change the wear properties. These carbides were detected by conventional X-ray diffraction. The expected effect of a carbide-rich structure on the erosion behaviour is to decrease themass loss by erosionmechanisms. Erosion was done by SiC erosive blast impin- gement tests. In this method the SiC particles were accelerated in a compressed air stream along a nozzle and projected against the surface to be eroded. After the laser treatment, the erosion behaviour of material was evaluated by measuring the weight loss. The wear test was complemented by SEMmicrostructural observations. Experiments performed in this work show that, in erosion, the mass loss of material does not depend on hardness as proposed by the accepted tribological theories. The worst behaviour was observed for laser-treated surfaces. Embedding of erodent particles plays a decisive role in blast erosion performance of the surfaces studied