Abrasive Wear Behavior of Heat-Treated ABC-Silicon Carbide

Hot-pressed silicon carbide, containing aluminum, boron, and carbon additives (ABC-SiC), was subjected to three-body and two-body wear testing using diamond abrasives over a range of sizes. In general, the wear resistance of ABC-SiC, with suitable heat treatment, was superior to that of commercial SiC. When the fine-scale (3 μm) diamond abrasives were used, it was found that thermal annealing at 1300°C increased the resistance to three-body wear by a factor of almost three, and two-body wear by a factor of almost two, compared with as-hot-pressed samples. Higher annealing temperatures, however, led to a decline in wear resistance from its highest value. Similar behavior was seen for 1300°C-annealed samples subjected to 15 μm diamond abrasive, although higher-temperature annealing at 1500°–1600°C enhanced the wear resistance again. When coarse abrasives (72 μm) were used, the wear resistance progressively increased with increased annealing temperature from ∼1000° to 1600°C. Corresponding transmission and scanning electron microscopy studies indicated that, whereas transgranular, conchoidal cracking was dominant in the mild abrasive wear with fine-scale (3 μm) abrasives, intergranular cracking and subsequent grain pullout was far more predominant in the more severe abrasive wear with coarse abrasives. Because the hardness and indentation toughness were barely altered during thermal treatment, the observed wear behavior was attributed mainly to the thermally induced microstructural changes, including the crystallization of glassy grain-boundary films, the possible strengthening of the boundaries due to the enhancement of the aluminum, and the formation of aluminum-rich, coherent nanoscale precipitates in the matrix grains above 1300°C.