Minimal wear of Hardox® 500 Tuf confirmed after +40,000 metric tons of crushed rock
Rådmansö Schakt och Transport AB is a Swedish transport company with 70 employees operating a fleet of more than 50 units, including a dozen large tipper trucks and trailers.
A major and growing part of its business is the transport of crushed rock, gravel and sand for road building and infrastructure projects. Rådmansö Schakt och Transport AB has been testing the new Hardox® 500 Tuf wear plate for more than a year in a tipper-trailer combination with a maximum load capacity of 38 metric tons. This rig has logged 11,000 km since it was delivered early in 2016. It has transported more than 40,000 metric tons of abrasive materials, mostly crushed granite rock from the company’s own quarry.
Amazing results
18 August 2017 was a day for Hardox® 500 Tuf to show what it’s made of. SSAB’s Technical development manager Mika Stensson came to Rådmansö to determine if the steel performed as promised. All signs so far pointed in the right direction, and the result was well above his expectations. When measuring the end section of the 6 mm bottom with an ultrasonic thickness probe, it showed wear of only around 5% after more than a year in operation. The bottom and sides showed practically no dents or other signs of damage. Also impressive was the condition of the plate edge, it looked almost new.
Tipper body manufactured by Hardox® In My Body Members SLP
SLP AB is a highly successful truck body and trailer manufacturer located in Övertorneå in the far north of Sweden, just below the Arctic Circle. SLP is a licensed member of SSAB’s quality program Hardox® In My Body, which ensures that the company’s products are made according to strict requirements for material choice, design and production methods. SLP manufactured the tipper and trailer body with the bottom plate in Hardox® 500 Tuf. The full-length plates were bent by SSAB Shape and then shipped to SLP. The 6 mm bottom in Hardox® 500 Tuf and 5 mm side plates in Hardox® 450 were MIG-welded manually with overlapping seams. SLP worked as usual with the welding and machining needed to finalize the bodies. No pre-heating is necessary for Hardox® 500 Tuf plates with a thickness of 16 mm or less.
Tech talk on Hardox® 500 Tuf
Hardox® 500 Tuf is the latest upgrade in the Hardox® range. It has an unusually narrow Brinell hardness window of 475-505 HBW. The guaranteed impact energy is 27 J at -20°C, at -40°C the typical value is 45 J. Superior wear and dent resistance gives extended service life and the ability to endure heavy impact. Hardox® 500 Tuf is tough enough to perform as a structural material in heavy-duty tipper bodies, containers and buckets, even in freezing conditions. Typical working conditions include the loading and unloading of heavy and sharp rocks in quarries and mines, handling large and heavy steel scrap, and in demolition when pieces of concrete with rebar are loaded or dropped into tippers. Based on sliding wear with granite, the estimated relative service life for Hardox® 500 Tuf is 85-100% longer than for Hardox® 400 according to WearCalc and TippCalc.