Coating & Wear Resistant Additives

One of the most important properties of materials is their surface resistance against destructive surface phenomena such as abrasion, scratches and corrosive environments. The erosion of a solid surface caused by contact with another surface is called wear. Sometimes wear can be productive if it’s controlled in applications like cutting or polishing. But most of the time wear is destructible behavior in material science and different approaches for increasing wear resistance is used. Wear greatly affects the lifetime of many engineered materials and can cause real damage to their performance for example debris from surface wear in many applications can disrupt the performance of specific equipment. In addition, wear increases costs significantly due to the increase in maintenance time and frequency, cost of materials and etc.

Wearing is related to the surface properties of materials so it’s logical to change the characteristics of the surface instead of the whole material. In many applications, we need different properties for the main body and the surface so we need to modify the surface to achieve desired characteristics in the designed part. One way for reinforcing material surface is by applying wear resistance coating or painting. It is possible for hard minerals, which are very abrasive, to play the opposite role and become wear-resistant additives for different materials. Using minerals as additives may create other qualities like anti-skid properties on the surface.