Improvement of wear resistance of aluminum alloy by plasma transferred arc welding process

摘要

The purpose of this study is to improve the hardnessand wear resistance characteristics of the aluminum alloy usingPlasma Transferred Arc process, called PTA process. The PTAprocess has been mainly applied to surface modification to steelproducts. It has some difficulties to apply this PTA process intoaluminum products due to its low melting point and high thermalconductivity. It can be possible to make stable modification toaluminum alloy optimizing plasma current and powder supply.Niobium carbide powder was selected to obtained the optimumhardness and wear resistance during a series of experiments usingPTA process. As the conclusions, sufficient hardness and wearresistances were archived at the surface modified layer bycontrolling niobium carbide composition to aluminum powder inthe PTA deposit metal. Deposits which have no blowhole, crackand detachment from base metal were obtained in case of morethan 60%NbC content of mixture ratio.