Wear behaviour of grey cast iron with the presence of copper addition

This article presents an experimental study to investigate wear resistance of grey cast iron samples with different additions of copper from 0.00 to 3.15 wt%. A pin-on-disc apparatus was designed and built to conduct the experimental trials and assess the influence of wear time, rotational speed and normal load on wear behaviour. Experiments on wear time were from 5 to 20 min, rotational speed from 90 to 1400 r/min and applied pressure from 2.0 to 8.0 MPa, all in dry conditions. Results showed that morphology and microstructure are important parameters in relation to the wear regime exhibited by the material. It is confirmed that wear losses increased with increase in wear time, rotational speed and applied pressure. Also, it is clearly seen that adding copper to the cast iron changed the ferrite matrix into a pearlite matrix. This led to a significant improvement in the mechanical properties, especially wear resistance, with slight increase in the hardness. Generally, wear losses were quantified for cast iron with added copper; an increase in copper from 0.00 to 3.15 wt% reduced the material loss by about 30%.