Dry sliding wear characteristics of in-situ TiBw/Ti6Al4V composites with different network parameters

Ceramics reinforced titanium matrix composites (TMCs) exhibited high specific strength especially with a special network architecture. This study investigated wear characteristics of the novel TMCs with different parameters, the results show that in-situ TiBw enhances hardness and resists abrasion effectively. Meanwhile, the mechanism varied from micro-cutting to brittle debonding with increasing TiBw content, and increasing network size caused the increase of COF and wear loss. Consequently, the composite with 8.5 vol.% TiBw and network size of 60 mu m exhibited the best wear properties. Moreover, the subsequent heat treatment further enhanced the abrasion resistance by transformed beta phase coexisted with network structure, which resulted in decrease of COF from 0.251 to 0.149 and reduced wear loss by 19.7%.