Characterisation and modelling of erosion wear of powder composite materials and coatings

In erosion wear of composite materials at solid particle impact against the surface, plastic deformation, brittle fracture or combined mechanisms are dominating, depending on the properties of target material surface. Soft metal-matrix of composite materials requires a model of plastic deformation and the ceramic hard phase needs both of the models: the plastic deformation and the brittle fracture model of wear. In this paper, an attempt is made to model the erosion wear of composite materials, to characterise them using indentation method and to correlate calculated erosion rates with experimental results and material parameters.