The Development of Next Generation Wear Plate Overlays using Big Data

Wear plates are a cost effective solution to protect integral components in the mining, cement, and energy generation industries. For decades, the wear plate market has been dominated by low cost Chromium Carbide Overlays (CCO) that only provide moderate resistance to low stress abrasion and spalls easily under the force of high impact. The Scoperta Rapid Alloy Development (RAD) software utilizes big data to engineer controlled microstructures that optimize the morphologies and volume fractions of complex carbides and borides to provide unique performance advantages. After the modeling and analysis of over 1 million different and unique alloy compositions, Oerlikon Metco has developed Metco 8233 and Metco 8226 to provide a magnitude of improvement in impact and low stress abrasion resistance over CCO by utilizing a high volume fraction of fine carbides and borides in a controlled matrix. The Big Data approach enables one to fine tune the morphology of the complex carbides and borides to produce the highest low stress abrasion resistance possible while maintaining a tough and impact resistant overlay that will improve the lifetime of integral components and save the customer from expensive downtime costs.