1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 1 Submitted to Scripta Materialia, September 2019. Revised October 2019. Highly sliding-wear resistant B 4 C composites fabricated by spark-plasma sintering with Ti-Al additives Angel L. Ortiz a, *, Carlos A. Galán b , Oscar Borrero-López a , Fernando Guiberteau a a Departamento de Ingeniería Mecánica, Energética y de los Materiales, Universidad de Extremadura, 06006 Badajoz, Spain. b Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Extremadura, 06006 Badajoz, Spain. Abstract The lubricated sliding-wear resistance of a fine-grained B 4 C composite fabricated by transient liquid-phase assisted spark-plasma sintering with Ti-Al additives at smooth conditions is critically compared to that of its reference monolithic B 4 C ceramic. It is shown that the former has an excellent sliding-wear resistance that exceeds that of the later by one order of magnitude (far less specific wear rate, worn volume, and wear damage), attributable to its greater hardness and densification. The wear mode is abrasion dominated by plastic deformation, plus localized microfracture in the monolithic ceramic. Implications for fabricating highly wear-resistant tribocomponents based on superhard ceramics are presented. Keywords: B 4 C; superhard materials; wear; spark-plasma sintering; transient liquid-phase sintering. * Corresponding author: Angel L. Ortiz Phone: +34 924289600 Ext: 86726 Fax: +34 924289601 E-mail: alortiz@unex.es *Manuscript (Text only) Click here to view linked References