How to balance the wear resistance, impact resistance and toughness of bucket teeth?

Choosing the Right Material

Selecting the Right Base Material: The appropriate base material should be selected based on the specific operating conditions. For example, high-manganese steel has excellent cold-work hardening properties, improving wear resistance through hardening under high-impact conditions. However, its wear resistance is poor under low impact loads. Microalloyed high-strength wear-resistant cast steel, on the other hand, is based on silicon and manganese. By adding alloying elements such as chromium, molybdenum, and vanadium, it achieves superior strength and toughness, and exhibits superior wear resistance under low and medium impact loads compared to high-manganese steel.

Optimizing Alloy Composition: Adding an appropriate amount of carbon increases the steel's hardness and wear resistance; adding elements such as nickel and molybdenum improves its toughness and impact resistance; and chromium increases its wear resistance. By properly adjusting the ratios of these alloying elements, the three properties of the bucket tooth can be balanced to a certain extent.

Improving Manufacturing Processes

Improving Steel Purity: Reducing non-metallic inclusions and gas elements in the steel reduces internal defects, improves the overall performance of the steel, and reduces the initiation and propagation of cracks caused by inclusions, thereby achieving a balanced balance of wear resistance, impact resistance, and toughness.

Optimizing heat treatment processes: Through heat treatments such as quenching and tempering, the material structure can be adjusted. For example, pre-heat treating low-carbon, low-alloy steel castings with high-temperature solution pretreatment and spheroidizing annealing, followed by quenching and tempering at appropriate temperatures, can achieve superior wear resistance while preventing fracture. Surface heat treatment and thermomechanical heat treatment can also be used to strengthen different parts of the bucket teeth.

Advanced casting processes, such as lost foam casting, can improve casting precision and surface quality, reduce casting defects, and ensure bucket tooth performance. Combined casting and forging processes can also combine the advantages of casting and forging to enhance the overall performance of bucket teeth.

Surface strengthening: Surface strengthening techniques such as cladding, shot peening, and inserts can be used to create a high-hardness, wear-resistant layer on the bucket tooth surface while maintaining the toughness of the base material. For example, cladding a layer of high-wear-resistant alloy or inserting carbide inserts on key wear areas of the bucket tooth can significantly improve wear resistance, while the toughness of the base material ensures that the bucket tooth will not fracture under impact.

Optimize Structural Design

Rationally design bucket tooth shape and angle: Design the appropriate bucket tooth shape and mounting angle based on different working conditions. For example, in mining, bucket teeth with a shallow mounting angle, a thicker cross-section, and a shorter length can improve impact toughness. In sandy soil excavation, bucket teeth with a larger mounting angle, a thinner cross-section, and a flatter, elongated tooth shape can improve excavation efficiency while also achieving a certain balance between the three performance characteristics.

Improve the overall bucket tooth structure: Long grooves or round holes can be dug into the lower portion of the tooth to increase the effective amount of metal wear, change the force distribution, and alleviate stress concentration, thereby improving the tooth's wear resistance and impact resistance. Furthermore, a modular bucket tooth structure allows for individual replacement of worn parts, reducing costs while enabling optimized design based on the wear and impact conditions of different parts using materials with different properties.