As a commonly reinforcing phase in wear-resistant materials, TiC is often added into wear-resistant materials to improve the wear resistance. The independently developed stepped molds with variable thicknesses were used to prepare the TiC-reinforced steels with the same composition though melt solidification processing to study the effect of the solidification rate on the particle size and wear performance. The effect of the hot rolling compression ratio on the particle size and wear performance was also studied. The length and aspect ratios of the particles in heat-treated TiC-reinforced steels with different billet thicknesses and rolling compression ratios were measured. With the increasing in the billet thickness and the decreasing in the rolling compression ratio, the length and aspect ratio of the particles increased in heat-treated TiC-reinforced steels, and the hardness decreased slightly. The three-body abrasive wear behavior of the TiC-reinforced steels was conducted using a standard dry sand rubber wheel wear testing procedure, and the modeling of the wear mechanism was established. The particle size is the main factor affecting wear resistance when the hardness of TiC-reinforced steels is similar. When the particles size is moderate, about 2-6 μm, the particle can break the sand tip and hinder the sand tip from sliding on the surface. In this manner, the mass loss decreased and the wear resistance improved. The large particles will be broken easily by the abrasive, and the small particles are removed easily by the abrasive in the wear process. So, the large and small particles cannot effectively prevent the damage of the abrasive to the matrix, and they have less of an effect on improving wear resistance.
Keywords: TiC particle; rolling compression ratio; solidification rate; wear mechanism; wear resistant steel.