Corrosive Wear Principles

Abstract The dual effects of corrosion and wear operate together in such industries as paper and pulp, coal handling, mining, and sugar beet extraction. There is a synergistic effect that causes far greater wastage to carbon steels, alloy steels, and even much more abrasion resistant cast irons. Several laboratory and in situ studies have been conducted to better understand the contributions of corrosion and wear to the wastage process. The environmental conditions are usually set by the process. However, there are a few instances where inhibitors such as sodium nitrite, sodium chromate, and sodium metasilicate have been successfully used to reduce metal wastage of carbon steels. Hardness has been found to be an unreliable guide to performance under wet sliding conditions. Heat treated alloy steels and cast irons are inferior to stainless steels. Even distilled water is too severe a corrodent for steels. While the austenitic stainlesses perform the best, cold rolling to increase hardness does not further improve their performance. The surface roughness of stainless steels gets smoother during corrosive wear testing while it gets rougher for the alloy steels. This observation substantiated the reputation of improved slideability for stainless alloys over alloy steels.