Deposition of abrasion-resistant Ni-WC overlays using hot wire TIG welding

本工作探索了利用热丝TIG技术沉积Ni/WC耐磨保护焊层。镍/碳化钨覆盖层通常被认为是油砂开采和许多其他采矿作业中性价比平衡最好的材料，这些作业用于从加拿大丰富的资源中获益。这些覆盖层在熔融状态下对过热非常敏感，导致增强物溶解，严重损害磨损性能。制造这些耐磨沉积物的替代方法是使用一种称为等离子转移弧焊（PTAW）的技术，该技术涉及昂贵的资本设备，生产率相对较低，并且缺乏脱位和现场修复应用的灵活性。拟议的研究旨在探索一种比PTA更低的资本成本，具有更高的生产力潜力，并且具有相同或更好的耐磨性能的技术。挑战在于理解过程条件，这是以前从未解决过的。这涉及广泛的实验，传热，流体流动，热力学分析，以及金相和电子显微镜分析。这项工作的影响很大，有可能使中小型企业扩大其提供的服务和产品进入一个非常有利可图的市场。这将使加拿大工业在全球采矿设备制造方面处于竞争地位。该项目是在国家科学研究委员会资助下开展的有前途的研究工作的扩展。

This work explores using the technology of Hot Wire TIG to deposit Ni/WC wear protection welded overlays. Ni/WC overlays are generally agreed to be the materials with the best cost-performance balance for oil sands extraction and many other mining operations used to benefit from Canada's abundant resources. These overlays are extremely sensitive to overheating in the molten state, resulting in dissolution of the reinforcement with serious detriment to wear performance. The alternatives to creating these wear resistant deposits is to use a technique called plasma transferred arc welding (PTAW) which involves expensive capital equipment, relatively low productivity, and lack of flexibility for out of position and field repair applications. The proposed investigation aims at exploring a technology of lower capital costs than PTA, with much higher potential for productivity, and with same or better wear performance. The challenge resides in understanding the process conditions, which have never been tackled before. This involves extensive experimentation, heat transfer, fluid flow, and thermodynamic analysis, as well as metallographic and electron microscopy analysis. The impact of this work is high, with the possibility of enabling small and medium enterprises to expand their offer of services and products into a very profitable market. This will position Canadian industries in a competitive position worldwide in the manufacturing of mining equipment. This project is and expansion of promising research work developed under an NSERC Engage grant.