Corrosion and wear performance of powder metallurgical Ti–ZrO 2 composites

Abstract Ti- x ZrO 2 (x: 10 and 20, wt.%) composites are produced at high density (98.2 %) by spark plasma sintering (SPS), and the corrosion and wear resistance of each composite is examined according to the change in the amount of reinforcement. SPS process under the sintering conditions is achieved at a sintering temperature of 1,000 °C for 10 min under a pressure of 30 MPa. Microstructural characterization reveals out that ZrO 2 particles as the secondary phase are homogeneously distributed in the metallic matrix and no new phase is formed between metal (Ti) and ceramic based materials (ZrO 2 ). Mechanical test findings indicate that a reinforcement level of 20 wt.% ZrO 2 reaches its highest value (933 HV) among the materials studied. Potentiodynamic measurements reveal that the corrosion resistance of the composites increases due to the increasing amount of ZrO 2 in their interaction with the Ringer’s solution. Also, it is determined that as ceramic reinforcement increases, microhardness increases, and not only the coefficient of friction but also the wear rate decreases during tribological interaction with the 20 wt.% ZrO 2 particles counterpart material under dry friction conditions.