Whether you need steel to fight abrasion, impact or sliding wear, SSAB offers an impressive range of grades, thicknesses and widths of wear-resistant steels, each with their own unique characteristics. Whatever you choose, you can be sure it will improve the wear performance of your equipment, cut lead times in your workshop, prolong service life, and increase productivity.
What makes wear plate resistant to abrasion and wear?
Wear-resistant steel plate, also called abrasion-resistant or AR plate, is made from steel billets and comes in many grades. Alloys like carbon, manganese, nickel, chrome and boron are added in different proportions. The grades therefore have different mechanical and chemical properties that will produce different results in an end product.
Carbon plays a key role in making the wear plate steel abrasion- and wear-resistant because it increases the steel’s hardness and toughness. But too much carbon alloy will reduce the steel’s tensile strength, making it brittle and susceptible to cracking.
That’s why good steelmaking processes are vital. You need just the right “recipe” with a balance of alloying, heat treatment and chemistry to achieve the properties you want. At SSAB, we believe we have perfected our recipe for producing steels with maximum toughness yet with a low enough carbon content to maximize plate weldability and maintain hardenability as the plate thickness increases.
Through-hardened steel: Strong and tough to the core
We produce our wear-resistant steels through a process known as quenching and tempering (Q&T). In this process, the grain structure is changed to increase toughness and improve formability, making it less brittle. This results in through-hardening of the steel.
Hardox® wear plate from SSAB is through-hardened steel that delivers better performance than other steels that are only surface hardened. Through-hardened steel undergoes a heat treatment in which the steel is exposed to high-temperature heating followed by controlled cooling. This improves the hardness not just of the outer layer, but right through to the core of the steel.
With its unique combination of through-hardness and toughness, Hardox® wear-resistant steel possesses structural properties that differentiate it from traditional AR steel, which is prone to cracking and wear and requires frequent replacement.
Normally, as hardness increases, steel’s formability and weldability decrease. But the toughness of Hardox® means that it can be used as a structural steel. So, fabricators can bend, form and weld it without its losing its properties. Together with its high yield strength, this enables smarter designs that use less steel material while maintaining the product’s strength and enhancing its performance.
Industries and uses for wear-resistant steel
Wear-resistant steels are used in applications where abrasion, wear and impact are the main causes of failure, not constant pressure or tension. So, such steels make the ideal choice for using in heavy-duty equipment and attachments in challenging or extreme environments.
Typical uses for SSAB’s wear-resistant steels include:
- Earthmoving equipment and attachments
- Construction, demolition and recycling
- Material handling, crushing and conveying
- Mining and quarrying
- Cement and other industrial plants
- Agricultural machinery
- Trucks, trailers and other vehicles
Which wear fighter is right for you?
Wear-resistant steel is tougher and harder than conventional steel plate and can last up to 4 times longer than conventional high-strength steel.
SSAB’s popular grades of Hardox® AR steel include AR400, AR450, AR500, AR550 and AR600. The numbers refer to their hardness level as measured on the Brinell hardness scale.
But which grade and steel type are right for you and your project? SSAB’s experts will help you find the perfect match for your application and the right balance between hardness, strength and formability.
In addition to strong and tough Hardox® wear plate, our family of wear-fighting steels includes:
- Duroxite® overlay. Add weeks, months or even years of trouble-free operations to your equipment. Delivered as plate, pipe, pin or wire. Simply weld it or bolt it on – no need for any special equipment – or fabricate it further in the workshop.
- SSAB boron steel. Enhances steel hardenability. You can reduce or eliminate tempering, use your current quenching process and expect highly predictable results, every time. You can quench in oil, water-polymer solutions or plain water.
- Tubes and round bars. Get rolling with versatile, ready-to-use AR steels with the same guaranteed properties as our wear plate.