Dry Sliding Wear Properties of Annealed Carbon Steels Matrix Composites by Nanosized TiC-TiB₂ Particles

Herein, nanoparticle-reinforced carbon steels are innovatively prepared through the use of TiC-TiB2/Al master alloys. The effects of nanoparticles on the microstructure and wear performance of carbon steels are investigated. It is found that the addition of nanoparticles inhibits the Widmanstatten structure. Also, the nanoparticles promote the formation of pearlite with finer lamellar structure and reduce the grain size. During the liquid-solid and solid-solid phase transformations, the nanoparticles act as heterogeneous cores to improve the nucleation rate. For wear tests, the presence of nanoparticles enhances the wear resistance of carbon steels. Carbon steels with 0.02 wt% nanoparticles show the lowest wear volume loss rate under each test condition. The excellent wear performance is related to the high hardness of substrates, inhibiting dislocation movement due to the refined microstructure and nanoparticles, and withstanding the external loads by nanoparticles. The findings obtained in this work can provide a new approach to fabricate high-wear-resistant carbon steels.