Assessment of the Potential of Three Attritor-milled and Consolidated Nanostructured Materials for Sliding Wear-resistant Applications

This paper deals with the assessment of the potential of nanocrystalline tungsten carbide-cobalt (WCCo), titanium disilicide (TiSi₂) and titanium silicide (Ti₅Si₃) for sliding wear-resistant applications. All the materials were milled in a laboratory attritor and the milled powders were consolidated using equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) process in three cases and chemical consolidation using polycarbosilane (allylhydridopolycarbosilane-AHPCS) in one case. The microhardness of each consolidated sample was measured using a Vickers hardness tester. The crystallite sizes of WCCo, Ti₅Si₃ and TiSi₂ consolidates after ECAE and Ti5Si3 after attritor milling and prior to chemical consolidation were determined using X-ray diffraction and, the relationship between the crystallite size and microhardness in these cases was examined. The data on microhardness of all the samples was analyzed with reference to current literature to assess the potential of each consolidate for sliding wearresistant applications. The results indicate that attritor-milled Ti₅Si₃ consolidated using polycarbosilane as the binder appears to have the best potential for sliding wear-resistant applications. The experimental data reported in this paper was obtained by former graduate students under the direction of the author at Lamar University.