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 μm exhibited the best wear properties. Moreover, the subsequent heat treatment further enhanced the abrasion resistance by transformed β phase coexisted with network structure, which resulted in decrease of COF from 0.251 to 0.149 and reduced wear loss by 19.7%.