Effect of three-staged normalizing on the impact wear resistance of 3.23 mass% Cr-Mn-Cu-Si cast iron

Abstract A low chromium cast iron (2.75 mass% C, 3.23 mass% Cr) was selected in this study to improve its impact wear resistance by three-staged normalizing. Based on seven preliminary normalizing processes, normalizing at 915 °C × 1 h was selected. Subsequently, this normalizing process was divided into three stages, matched with different cooling rates. Results indicate that after normalizing 8b3# and normalizing 8b4#, the wear weight losses of specimen 8b3# and specimen 8b4# are reduced to 0.4400 g and 0.4305 g from that (1.1134 g) of as-cast respectively. Under impact wear, the resistance behavior of specimen 8b3# is mainly dominated by micro-cutting and the micro-spalling mechanism without obvious hardening effect. For specimen 8b4#, plastic deformation makes considerable contribution to its resistance behavior, which is enhanced by the effect of work hardening.