Correlation between hardness and abrasive wear of grinding balls

The grinding ball is manufactured by the Algerian Foundries (ALFET - Tiaret). It is used by the cement industry to transform the rock into fine, used in the cement manufacture. This product undergoes very frequent wear. This wear occurs in various forms (abrasion wear and impact wear) and each has a varying impact on this product life. Abrasion wear is the result of friction between many surfaces (rock, crusher shielding and balls between them), between which a sliding contact occurs, and causes a metal wrenching and a mechanical disintegration of these surfaces. The impact wear is the result of the shock between these surfaces (rock, crusher shielding and balls) and the ball that hits these surfaces from multiple angles, causes their disintegration. Generally, wear resistance improves when hardness increases and a very hard material is more resistant to wear because it less risk to seize in presence of particles abrasive and it opposes their penetration in its surface layer. Wear is estimated, in this work, by the mass loss of the heat-treated balls. A correlation between the hardness and abrasive wear of the balls is established in this work.