Cladding of aluminum substrates with iron based wear resistant materials using controlled short arc technology

For lightweight constructions aluminum alloys are established since many years. Seal face and inlays, made of wear resistant materials, are commonly used to reach a partial wear protection for aluminum components. Problems concerning this approach are the necessary space and the endurance strength of the inlay-part joint. An alternative for the replacement of the inlays by cladding using innovative and easy to handle short arc technology will be discussed in this paper. The presented technology offers the potential to control the energy input into the substrate and so the formation of brittle intermetallic phases which occur in the aluminum-steel interface. The usage of wear resistant iron based feedstock materials enables further applications due to advantageous physical and mechanical properties. In the experiments the aluminum alloy AlSi8Cu3 was cladded with stainless steel and a nanocrystalline solidifying wear resistant iron based alloy using the coldArc equipment. Due to the low heat input, intermetallic phases could be minimized using stainless steel as cladding material as well as nanocrystalline solidifying iron based material. Further investigations in the resulting interface section, which did not exceed 10 µm, had been carried out by using SE-microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis.