Laser cladding high wear and tribo-corrosion resistant Fe-based defect-free layers on nodular cast iron

Without preheating, defect-free Fe-based laser cladding layers on nodular cast iron substrate were prepared by synchronous feeding different particle sizes alloy powders. Elemental vanadium scavenges the carbon that diffuses out of the nodular cast-iron substrate. This consumption suppresses hard, brittle martensite and instead forms wear-resistant vanadium-carbide grains in situ. The cladding layer fabricated with nominal 30 wt% vanadium carbide was mainly composed of martensite and in-situed V 6 C 5 . Although the substrate's friction coefficient being slightly lower due to the lubrication effect of graphite particles, the average hardness of the cladding layer was 920 HV 0.2 , providing 48.8 times greater wear resistance, and it exhibited 4.23 times greater tribo-corrosion resistance than the nodular cast iron substrate.