Thermal control managing for in-situ synthesis of Ti-C-Fe system by laser cladding on carbon steel

In-situ laser cladding enables the formation of a uniform clad by melting the powder and substrate to form a composition from pure powder components. Since TiC has desirable properties such as hardness, wear and corrosion resistance, titanium (Ti) and graphite (C) are used as a composite material (i.e., TiC) to increase hardness and wear resistance of AISI 1030 carbon steel. To increase the corrosion, erosion, and wear resistance of a low grade material substrate the entire substrate surface must be coated by the multi-track cladding. Preliminary experiments indicate that deposition of multi-track of TiC-Fe base composite results in different TiC morphologies which might affect the clad properties. In this paper, effect of different heat input on TiC morphology has been studied. Results show that different heat input which are designed by laser parameters affect the TiC morphology. SEM and EDS data show that TiC particles are built up uniformly during the laser cladding process in the iron matrix with dissimilar morphologies.