Surface failure and wear of cemented carbide rock drill buttons—The importance of sample preparation and optimized microscopy settings

The combination of suitable mechanical properties and wear resistance makes cemented carbide one of the most interesting engineering composite materials for tribological applications, such as in rock drilling. Despite the fact that cemented carbide buttons have been used in rock drilling applications for a long time the detailed understanding of the prevailing wear mechanisms is far from complete and wear and breakage of rock drill buttons are still one of the lifetime-limiting factors for rock drill bits. Consequently, further research in this area, including detailed characterization of worn drill button surfaces and sub-surface regions, is needed in order to support the future development of new cemented carbide grades with improved failure and wear resistance. In the present paper, high resolution scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) have been used to characterize the wear and failure mechanisms of worn drill buttons and samples exposed to well controlled impact and scratch tests performed in the laboratory. The most important mechanisms of surface failure and wear were found to be severe plastic deformation, cracking, crushing of individual WC grains and mechanical/tribochemical degradation of the Co binder phase including Co depletion. Fracture cross-sectioning under tensile stress-state was found to be the best method for achieving large and reliable sub-surface cross-sections within a short time and to a low cost. The importance of optimized microscopy and spectroscopy settings for enhanced surface sensitivity for the examination of small-scale tribological phenomena is illuminated and discussed.