Use of Heat-Applied Coatings to Reduce Wear on Agricultural Machinery Components

This article presents the effect of the conditions of abrasive compounds on the wear of samples made by different methods. The 28MnB5 steel was used, which is intended for agricultural components, to which two arc and laser coatings were applied. The study included the analysis of microstructure, microhardness, roughness, and tribological experiments on a dedicated stand. The arc coating was found to significantly improve the tribological properties compared to the samples without the coating. Varied wear results were obtained for the laser coating depending on the parameters of the abrasive compound. Studies of the surface roughness of the samples showed that the concentration and pH of the abrasives have a significant effect on the changes in the surface parameters after the tribological tests. The results of the tribological experiments indicated that wear resistance for some of the abrasive mass conditions was improved by the application of heat-applied coatings. In addition, it was found that the power consumption on the stand was the highest for abrasive mass conditions of a 10% moisture content and a pH of 10. For these test conditions, the mass loss was four times higher than for the parameter with W0% and pH7. The energy consumption of the stand was 60 kWh lower for this variant than for the parameter with W10% and pH10. The results of the study have important practical applications that can help in the selection of materials for agricultural machinery components, depending on the abrasive mass conditions.