Wear Characteristics of Zirconia Toughened Ceramic Drawing Dies

Wear resistance of several zirconia toughened ceramics in comparison with a metal-ceramic CoWC has been studied in drawing wire field test. Result indicates that the harder the ceramic die, the longer the service life. Excellent wear resistance of ceramic die is obtained with a very high hardness (19 GPa). The service life is nearly three times that of Co-WC die. SEM observation on wear surfaces showed that material removal is mainly caused by plastic flow and ploughing process. But when the ceramic is composed of zirconia, alumina and some titanium carbide, micro-chipping and tribochemical reaction take place, and wear rate increases. Wear and friction induced martensite was detected by XRD. The T-M (tetragonal to monoclinic) phase transformation has a contribution to inhibiting microfracture.