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HARDOX HITUF – A NEW THICKER WEAR PLATE FOR TOUGH SITUATIONS.
Customers confirmed this need for a special steel plate with higher toughness. In the following co-operation with a major customer, producing earth-moving equipments, a new steel plate with a high hardness combined with a hard toughness was to be created. After six months of research and development work focused on achieving the best wear plate available for heavy section wear applications, SSAB Oxelösund succeeded in the creation of HARDOX HiTuf. “A plate with a thickness up to 120 mm for wear application where structural integrity is specifically demanded” says Senior Metallurgist Andris Cuibe, one of the inventors of the new material concept. To find the desired impact toughness many manufacturers of heavy gauges wear parts are today directed to use structural quenched and tempered steel with a hardness of 260-290 Brinell. With HARDOX HiTuf, the increase hardness up to 350 Brinell allows for a 10 to 20 % longer wear life. This is achieved on average by up grading to HARDOX HiTuf wear plate. Welding usually demands more precaution and pre-heating as plates become thicker and harder. Here HARDOX HiTuf can have a lot to offer. Some wear parts like rippers and cutting edges in larger excavator buckets are subjected to important bending forces. Apart from being wear resistant, these components therefore also have to be sufficiently tough. Here the new HARDOX HiTuf fills the gap between the structural plate of 260-290 Brinell and the wear plate of 400 Brinell. HARDOX HiTuf is indeed 2 to 3 times tougher than a typical 400 Brinell plate. “We have found a very fine balance of combined hardness and toughness, necessary for these applications.” continues Materials Researcher Andris Cuibe. HARDOX HiTuf is also “customer friendly”: Maintenance shops and fabricators accustomed to handling thick wear plates will be surprised over the improvement in the weldability and thermal cutting of HARDOX HiTuf. “Pre-heating prior to gas cutting is only recommended for plates thicker than 100 mm.” concludes Andris Cuibe from the HARDOX development group in Oxelösund. No doubts that the new wear plate grade from SSAB Oxelösund will have a great success.
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