Influence of Fracture Toughness and Microhardness on the Erosive Wear of Cermet Coatings Deposited by Thermal Spray

An evaluation of the relationship between the microhardness and fracture toughness with resistance to erosive wear of WC10Co4Cr, WC-12Co, and Cr3C2-25NiCr coatings was conducted. Powder and flexible cored wire feedstock materials were applied by high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) and flame spray (FS), respectively. The erosive wear mechanism prevailing in the coatings was found to be brittle, which also explains the higher erosion rate for the experimental condition using the particle impact angle of 90 deg and impact velocity of 9.33 m/s. The best wear performance was for the coatings applied by HVOF that attains 1.83 mm³/kg for the 90 deg/3.61 m/s test condition. The coating obtained with the WC-10Co4Cr material using the FSFC method showed tungsten carbide decarburization, justifying its poor mechanical properties and poor performance in the erosive wear test. Flame-sprayed flexicords proved to be a promising alternative to HVOF in obtaining coatings with low porosity and acceptable mechanical properties, especially in applications where the use of the HVOF technique is inadequate because of inaccessibility or excessively high cost. Values of K _c for the coatings obtained by HVOF (7.35 to 10.83 MPa.m^1/2) were between two and three times greater than the values obtained for the coatings resulting from FSFC (2.39 to 3.59 MPa.m^1/2), in a similar manner as with the microhardness.