Design and manufacture of novel wear-and-erosion resistant high-entropy alloys

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Equipment used in mineral, oil and gas industries often suffer from severe wear and erosion degradation during operation, such as pumps, valves, cones, impeller, crushers, and ground engagement tools. The wear or erosion induced early failure of these products significantly reduce the service of life of these machines, and, consequently, increase the product and service cost. The academic team at the University of Toronto will collaborate with the Weir Group Plc technical staff to design and fabricate new metallic materials that can significantly improve the wear-and-erosion resistant properties for the components of the mineral, oil and gas products. This project will be focused on an emerging alloy system - high-entropy alloys (HEAs). HEAs are loosely defined as solid-solution alloys that are made of five or more metallic elements in equimolar or near-equimolar ratios, wherein multiple principal elements show a strong tendency of solid-solution hardening effects but also exhibit superior toughness. The search for new HEAs with optimal mechanical properties will be based on a high-throughput combinatorial method. After prescreening of the HEAs at small scales, the University of Toronto team will fabricate large-scale HEAs for testing in real or approximate operation conditions. The new HEAs are expected to exhibit reduced wear and erosion rates compared to typical metallic contact parts. The one-year project focuses on the feasibility studies of HEAs and training of one postdoctoral fellow, one MASc student, two MEng students, and two undergraduate students. The scientific objective is to give a fundamental understanding of deformation mechanisms and design rules of HEAs. The long-term technical goal is to increase the service life of these components and reduce the overall cost due to downtime, maintenance of components, and related service. This collaborative research will lead to the establishment of a few subsequent major research projects between the University of Toronto and the Weir Group. The new HEAs and related techniques will be transferred to the partner organizations, benefiting relevant industries in Canada and training future Canadian researchers and engineers.