Iron-aluminide alloy derivates – Cladding, microstructure and wear resistance potential for three body abrasion

Many metallic wear resistant alloys, which are applied by plasma powder cladding, use precipitated hard phases as a reinforcing element. The group of aluminides, in particular the iron aluminides, have an interesting application profile for various applications, generally high-temperature applications, and consist exclusively of an intermetallic phase that should be suitable for wear protection. Iron aluminides in particular also have a significant cost advantage over conventional nickel or cobalt-based alloys. For this reason, there have been efforts to use this alloy group for wear protection for several decades. However, this group is difficult or even impossible to process using cladding, as they are too brittle for the application. The investigations presented in this contribution show two approaches to modifying the composition of the iron aluminides in such a way that they can be clad with reasonable effort. The first approach is the conventional way of alloying with small amounts of titanium, molybdenum and boron. The second approach is to modify the alloy in the direction of complex concentrated alloys (also high or medium entropy alloys). This is demonstrated based on five different alloys. It is shown that both the processability and the microstructure morphology as well as the wear protection can be influenced by the targeted modification of the alloys. Finally, the wear protection potential of the alloys is presented in comparison to the conventionally used Stellit 6 and 12 from the literature. • Plasma cladding of FeAl derivates. • Wear resistance of a FeAlTiNi based multi principal element alloy. • Alloy modification of an Fe 3 Al intermetallic compound.