INFLUENCE OF GRANITE PARTICLE SIZE ON

CORROSION-WEAR SYNERGISM OF WHITE CAST IRON

MILL BALLS
Deniol K. Tanaka, Amilton Sinatora, Andre P. Tschiptschin, Giuseppe Pintaude, Simone
O. Custodio
Sao Paulo University, Av. Prof. Mello Moraes 2331
Cidade Universitaria, Sao Paulo, SP, CEP 05508-900, BRAZIL
ABSTRACT
This paper presents mass loss results of 18 w% Chromium white cast iron mill balls in laboratory
grinding tests using granite as abrasive material, under dry and wet conditions. The mass loss was
determined by seven 50 mm diameter sand cast and quenched balls. The granite average particle
size was between 2 mm and 6.4 mm with 49.1 % of particles smaller than 3.36 mm. Each test was
carried out with 8 kg of granite batch. In the wet tests 4.5 liters of distilled water were added. Each
test cycle was 6 hours period. Complementary tests were carried out with coarse abrasive material
(greater than 3.36 mm) and fine abrasive material (smaller than 3.36 mm).
In dry grinding tests, the raw and coarse granite did not present any noticeable difference, with ca.
50 mg/cycle value. This behavior can be attributed to the retention of fine particles in the interspace between coarse particles. The wear rate with fine granite grinding was 120 mg/cycle and
attributed to the segregation of quartz. For wet grinding, the wear rate increased with decreasing
particle size. Fine particle wear rate was 131 mg/cycle while for coarse particle 57 mg/cycle. Raw
granite grinding presented an intermediate value of 104 mg/cycle. In this case, fine particles present
in raw material probably had agglutinated on coarse particle surface, conferring this abrasiveness.
In raw granite grinding tests, ball mass loss under wet tests was two times greater than that
observed in dry condition, showing synergism between corrosion and wear. On the other hand,
when the tests were performed with coarse or fine particles, the synergic effect was less
pronounced. These results show that the abrasive particle distribution is critical to the synergism
study, in other words, synergism between corrosion and wear is strongly dependent on the
tribossystem.
Key words: corrosion; abrasion, synergism; wear; granite, particle size, white cast iron, mill ball.
1. INTRODUCTION
Although wet grinding have many advantages, such as increasing efficiency in mineral reduction process,
demonstrated by Gundewar and co-workers [1], and better air pollution control, but the grinding body
wear is increased, due to the effects of corrosive process. Therefore, the corrosion-wear synergism has
been studied specially by mining industry researchers.

ASTM G40-92 Standard [2] defines corrosive wear as the wear in which chemical or electrochemical
reaction with environment is significant, but it does not consider the synergism between these two
phenomena.
Gunderwar and co-workers [1] verified the synergistic effect between wear and corrosion. They studied
ball wear under three grinding conditions: dry grinding with ore; wet grinding with ore and wet grinding
without ore. The sum of ball wear in dry grinding and wet grinding without ore, was one third of ball
wear in wet grinding with ore. Perez and Moore [3] summarized to three categories of electrochemical
and tribologycal interactions:
a. strain-induced corrosion due to the electrochemical cell development between worn and unworn sites;
b. electrochemical cell development between different phases, for example the metal matrix and the hard
second phase, present in ball material with occurrence of pitting corrosion, and
c. electrochemical cell development between ore and metal.
In this paper, the mass loss results of white cast iron mill balls in dry and wet grinding conditions and the
influence of abrasive particle size distribution on the interaction between corrosion and wear are
presented.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1. Balls
50 mm diameter grinding balls were sand-cast and its chemical composition is presented in Table 2.
Table 2 - Chemical composition (mass %) of balls used on grinding tests.
Carbon

Chromium

Silicon

Manganese

Phosphor

Sulfur

2.96

18.00

0.96

1.50

0.04

0.02

The balls were austenitized at 950C for five hours, quenched in forced air stream, and tempered by one
hour at 250C. The final microstructure is a martensitic matrix with 29% volume fraction of M7C3
carbides, less than 5% volume fraction of perlite and 0.4% of retained austenite.
2.2. Abrasive material
The raw abrasive material used for grinding tests was granite with ca. 20% quartz. Its particle size
distribution is presented in Table 3.
The preliminary tests were performed with raw granite and complementary tests were carried out with
coarse particles (greater than 3.36 mm) and fine particles (smaller than 3.36 mm), in order to characterize
particle size influence on corrosion-wear synergism.

Table 3 - Raw granite particle size distribution.

Screen mesh
(mm)
19.10
12.70
9.52
6.35
3.36
2.00
0.42
0.21
0.15
0.07
0.003

% Retained mass
0.00
0.50
4.20
19.6
33.8
15.9
13.7
3.10
1.60
2.80
4.80

2.3. Grinding tests

Grinding tests, using seven sand-cast and heat-treated balls, were performed in a 240 mm diameter and
320 mm length ceramic jar laboratory mill filled with 8 kg of granite. The grinding rotation was
equivalent to 75% of critical velocity. For wet test, 4.5 liters of distilled water were added.
The mass loss was measured at every 6 hours filled with new batch of granite at beginning of new cycle.
After each cycle the balls were ultra-sound cleaned with anhydrous ethanol and dried under hot air
stream. The mass was measured with MJ -300 model CHYO electronic scale.

3. RESULTS
The accumulated mass losses at the end of each cycle using raw granite, under dry condition and wet
condition, are presented in Figure 1.

Acumulated mass loss

[mg]

Raw Granite
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0

y = 103.8x - 25.4

y = 51.4x + 1

Cycle (=6 hours)

Dry

Wet

Figure 1 Accumulated mass losses with raw granite under dry and wet
conditions.
For each condition, the angular coefficient represents the wear rate. The wear rate under wet condition
were more than twice of those observed under dry condition, showing interaction between corrosion and
wear. Duda [4], in similar experiments using white cast iron balls, in real industrial machine, grinding raw
cement mix slurry (wet) and cement clinker (dry), found two orders magnitude increase in ball wear
under wet conditions. The difference between this authors results and the present paper results can be
attributed to the size of milling machine and to the testing itself: the ball and ground materials.
In order to elucidate the influence of particle sizes on wear and wear corrosion synergism, a new series of
testing using only fine or coarse granites were started. Figure 2 shows the accumulated mass loss in dry
and wet condition with coarse particles only (> 3.36 mm).

Acumulated mass loss

[mg]

Coarse Granite
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

y = 57x + 5.8

y = 49.4x + 10

Cycle ( = 6 hours)
Dry

Wet

Figure 2 Accumulated mass losses with coarse granite under dry and wet condition.
In this case, the observed wear rates in two conditions are approximately the same, showing that the
synergistic effect is less pronounced. The difference among material loss rate is about 15%,
demonstrating that particle size presents an important influence on wear and corrosion processes.
Figure 3 shows the mass loss results for fine particles (<3.36 mm) under dry and wet condition.
In Figure 3, the observed behavior is the same for coarse particles, i.e. there is no pronounced interaction
between corrosion and wear, with difference on angular coefficients around 9%.

Acumulated mass loss

[mg]

Fine Granite
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0

y = 131x - 13.6
y = 120.2x + 3.8

Cycle ( = 6 hours)
Dry

Wet

Figure 3 Accumulated mass losses with fine particles under dry and wet condition.
Figures 4 and 5 show the accumulated mass loss under dry and wet grinding conditions.

Accumulated mass loss [mg

Dry Condition
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0

Cycle (=6 hours)

Raw

Coarse

Fine

Figure 4 Accumulated mass losses under dry condition.

The analysis of wear results under dry condition, presented in Figure 4, indicates that raw and coarse
grinding did not show any noticeable difference, but for fine granite grinding the material loss rate were
2.5 times greater. This result indicates that in raw granite grinding, the fine particles are confined in
coarse granite inter-space presenting no effect on abrasion.
This result does not agree with those observed by Misra and Finnie [5], who found opposite behavior,
where the wear rate increases with increasing particle sizes. Although they pointed out that these results
are well known in literature, they are not fully understood.
There are not much detailed results in the literature to explain the greater wear rate with fine particle
grinding. From the mechanical point of view, testing with fine particle should present smaller wear rate,
as pointed out by Misra and Finnie [5]. On the other hand, it has to be considered that quartz, feldspar and
mica are the granite constituents, and quartz being the harder component of granite will be the main
abrasive constituent. During grinding, quartz can be segregate, and this free quartz will scratch the ball
surface presenting greater wear rate.
The Figure 5 shows the accumulated mass loss under wet condition.

Accumulated mass loss [mg

Wet Condition
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0

Cycle (= 6 hours)
Raw

Coarse

Fine

Figure 5 Accumulated mass losses under wet condition.

Under wet condition, fine particles grinding also presents greater wear rate. On the other hand, for raw
and coarse granite grinding there is a remarkable difference in wear rate, showing that the removal of fine
particles from raw material reduces the wear rate. In this case, water can agglutinate fine particles itself
and to the coarse particle surface, not staying inside the pores between coarse particles, and they will be
able to scratch the milling balls surface.
With respect to the synergic effect between corrosion and wear, this is more pronounced in raw granite
grinding, as observed in Figure 1, and the fine particles granite grinding presented smaller synergism, as
can be seen in Figure 3.
Apparently, synergic effect would be expected more pronounced in cases in which wear rate is greater, as
observed in fine particles grinding. However, synergism was less pronounced in this test condition.
At this time, there is an explanation for this behavior. The passivation kinetics plays an important role in
this process. In the presence of fine particles, the passive film destruction or removal takes place in a
small extension and if the repassivation process is fast enough, the wear process will be predominant
rather corrosion and the synergism is less noticeable.
The repassivation process can not be fast sufficiently in fine particles grinding if the water amount
available for corrosion process being smaller, because a portion of water is absorbed by granite
components. Therefore, the final corrosivity will be smaller and the synergic effect not much noticeable
(testing with different water content grinding is undergoing to verify the influence of water amount).
4. SUMMARY
1. Particle sizes control is an important parameter for the granite grinding mill ball wear study. There
were not observed any difference on wear rate for raw and coarse granite grinding. For raw material,
fine particles are retained between coarse particle inter-space. For fine particle grinding wear rates

were 2.5 times greater than raw or coarse granite grinding. This relatively high wear rate can be
attributed do the segregation of quartz particles.
2. For wet grinding, the ball material weight loss increased decreasing granite particle size, being
observed 57 mg/cycle for coarse and 131 mg/cycle for fine granite grindings. For raw granite
grinding, the weight loss was 104 mg/cycle, an intermediate value. This can be attributed to the fine
particle agglomeration on coarse particle surface.
3. For wet grinding, synergism or interactions between corrosion and wear was observed. In raw granite
grinding, wear rate under wet condition was two times greater than those observed under dry
condition. For coarse granite grinding, this difference was 15%, for fine granite 9% and for fine
particles the difference war negligible.
REFERENCES
[1] C. S. Gunderwar et al., Int. J. Mineral Processing, 29, 121-139 (1990).
[2] ASTM Standard G40-92, Standard Terminology Relating to Wear and Erosion. Annual Book of
Standards, 03.02, 158-163, ASTM (1992).
[3] R. Perez, J. J. Moore. In: Int. Conf. on Wear of Materials. K. C. Ludema, (Ed.) ASME, 1983.
Proceedings, 67-78.
[4] W. H Duda. Cement Data Book Internationale Verfahrenstechniken der Zementtindustrie.
Wiesbaden, Berlin, Bauverlag (1985).
[5] A. Misra, I. Finnie. Wear, 65, 359-373 (1981).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank to Sao Paulo State Research Support Foundation - FAPESP for the financial support
through Project n. 94/3529-0.