Wear Reducing Effect of Embedded Quartz Abrasives in Crushing-Pin-on-Disc Procedure

Crushing of minerals involves several wear mechanisms. The mineral medium increases the complexity of the wear process by introducing many new variables. Despite the fact that processing of minerals normally causes wear, the minerals can also in some cases decrease the extent of wear. The comminution products, for example, can decrease the wear rate in abrasive wear during high-pressure grinding. The aim of this work was to study the effect of embedded quartz on abrasive wear of wear resistant steels by using the Crushing Pin-on-Disc device. This device is based on the common pin-on-disc principle with the addition of abrasives as loose particles between the pin and the disc. The wear resistant steel specimens were first subjected to a running-in period. One set of specimens was run-in with quartz and the other set with granite. After all the specimens were tested with granite; the specimens with quartz running-in suffered less wear than the specimens that had been run-in with granite. The reason for this was that quartz had formed an in-situ composite on the surface of the steel specimens during the running-in period. This composite layer is thin but hard and it effectively resists granite abrasive penetration into the surface and thus reduces the wear rate