Wheel Disc By Keepsake Engineering Consultancy Pvt. Ltd.

Wheel Disc is made out of Boron Carbide material, which is a kind of ceramic material and is brittle in nature. The raw material impinges at a very high velocity on a rotating disc. The resultant erosion thins the Boron Carbide till it suddenly break in to the pieces. The disc is rotating at 24,000 RPM and the sudden breakage causes heavy damage to other parts.

Cause Of the problem: Main cause of wear is erosion at a temperature of 540 C along with centrifugal force due to high rotational speed. The impinging material is hard and has a tendency of caking. This reduces some wear but increases imbalance that may cause vibration and subsequent failure due to variance in centrifugal forces.

Our Solution: Boron Carbide was replaced by wear part made of machinable and harden able Titanium Carbide. This material can be processed more easily to manufacture this rather complex profile. TiC is not brittle, has high erosion resistance and retains hardness at an elevated temperature of 540 C. The low density does not induce stress on the bearings of the wheel disc that is rotating at 24000 RPM. This application has now been standardized. The wear part is inspected every month during the routine maintenance schedule to study the thinning and to decide on replacement period. The end user managed to save a huge amount of money because of avoidance of sudden break down and unscheduled shut down.