Wear testing
Many standardized laboratory wear tests available on the market, such as ASTM-G99 Pin-on-Disc and ASTM-G65 Rubber-Wheel, are designed to simulate highly specific wear conditions. These tests often involve extremely hard abrasives fixed in place, causing severe cutting wear.
However, these methods have a few drawbacks. In most field applications, such as buckets or dump bodies in mines or quarries, the abrasive material typically slides, rotates and consists of rocks containing different minerals of varying hardness. This creates wear conditions that are far less uniform than those simulated in standardized tests. Additionally, these tests can only evaluate one steel sample at a time, making it challenging to compare the performance of different samples tested on separate occasions.
SSAB has dedicated significant effort to addressing these challenges. Extensive research has been conducted to analyze standardized test methods and their results. Furthermore, substantial development work has been undertaken to create a testing method that more accurately simulates the wear conditions found in real-world applications.
SSAB’s wear drum test
SSAB aimed to develop a wear test that more closely replicates real-world wear conditions, such as abrasives rolling or sliding and varying abrasive hardness levels. The results from our drum wear test have shown significant differences compared to the outcomes of the G99 and G65 tests, aligning much more closely with wear patterns observed in the field.
The test utilizes an Ø800 mm steel drum with 34 samples mounted in holders along the inside surface of the drum, ensuring all samples are subjected to identical conditions. Different types of abrasives can be used depending on the specific industry or application being simulated, such as iron ore, coal or corrosive aggregates. Wear is quantified by weighing the samples before and after testing. The results are expressed as relative service life, calculated by dividing the mass loss of the sample by the mass loss of the reference material (S355/A36 steel). This metric indicates the potential improvement in service life when upgrading from a reference steel to a higher-grade steel.
Relative service life for different grades of steel, with granite as the abrasive material.
SSAB wear drum.
Sample and sample holder.
The information in this report is only applicable to SSAB’s products and should not be applied to any other products than original SSAB products.
This report provides general results and recommendations for SSAB steel products. This report is subject to SSAB’s Terms of Use. It shall be the user's responsibility to verify that the information contained herein is correct and is suitable to be used for the particular purpose and application of the user. The report is intended to be used by professional users only who possess adequate expertise, qualification and knowledge for the safe and correct use of the results and recommendations in this report. This report is provided “as is”. The use of the report is at user’s own discretion and risk and that users will be solely responsible for any use of this report. SSAB disclaims any liability for the content or potential errors of this report, including but not limited to warranties and condition of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or suitability for individual applications. SSAB shall not be liable for any kind of direct or indirect damages and/or costs related to or arising therefrom, whether special, incidental, consequential or directly or indirectly related to the use of, or the inability to use, the report or the content, information or results included therein.