Tribology International 41 (2008) 778782

Reduction of mouldboard plough share wear by a combination

technique of hardfacing
Z. Horvat
a
, D. Filipovic
b,
, S. Kosutic
b
, R. Emert
c
a
Belje d.d., Industrijska 1, 31326 Darda, Croatia
b
Faculty of Agriculture, Svetosimunska 25, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
c
Faculty of Agriculture, Trg Svetog Trojstva 3, 31000 Osijek, Croatia
Received 19 April 2007; received in revised form 23 January 2008; accepted 23 January 2008
Available online 6 March 2008
Abstract
This paper presents comparison of wear of regular mouldboard plough shares and two plough shares made of different basic materials,
steel EN 10027 (HF-1) and EN 50Mn7 (HF-2), hardfaced by a combination of two welding processes, namely shielded metal arc welding
(SMAW) and high-frequency induction welding (HFIW). Wear was determined by measurements of the changes of dimensions and
weight during ploughing of sandy clay soil in Croatia. The dimensions and weight losses were lower for both types of hardfaced plough
shares in comparison to regular shares, and lower fuel consumption and a higher rate of work were achieved with hardfaced plough
shares. Hardfaced plough shares also offer lower production costs in comparison to regular plough shares. According to the overall
results, this protection method can be recommended as an efcient solution for plough share wear protection.
r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Tillage tool; Wear; Hardfacing; Fuel consumption; Rate of work; Costs
1. Introduction
Soil tillage is one of the fundamental phases of
agricultural production and may be dened as a modica-
tion of soil structure due to the mechanical work of tillage
tools. This work involves large amounts of energy
necessary to cut, break down, invert soil layers, reduce
clod size and rearrange aggregates, and causes signicant
wear to tillage tools [1,2]. A major portion of this energy
and wear loss can be attributed to the friction between the
soil and tool surface [3,4]. In this process abrasion with
hard soil particles is the dominant inuence on the tillage
tool wear [5,6]. The wear of soil tillage tools by abrasion of
soil particles highly corresponds to the mechanical and
microstructural properties of the material, which the tools
are made of, on the soil texture and also on the working
conditions such as the cultivation depth and the soil water
content [7,8].
Tillage tools subjected to low stress abrasive wear are
usually made of carbon or low-alloy steels [9]. Although
they are used traditionally and yield adequate performance
studies on different materials and/or different surface
hardening methods for reducing abrasive wear of tillage
tools are still being carried out for understanding the
effects of unexpected soil conditions [10]. Wear protection
methods have the essential assumption that higher material
hardness increases abrasion wear resistance, but the
inuence of material characteristics on wear is very
complex and often depends on multiple impacts. To
achieve optimal solutions for abrasion wear protection,
investigations have to combine tribosystem analysis as well
as laboratory and exploitation investigations [11].
Research on the wear of metals which took place during
the second half of the twentieth century has brought new
understanding and advanced major concepts of tribology
[12]. Some researchers studied impact loads between soil
particles and agricultural implements surfaces during soil
working operations [1315], while others experimented
with different wear resistant materials [16,17]. Several
methods have been developed over the years to increase the
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Corresponding author. Tel.: +385 1 2393719; fax: +385 1 2393724.

E-mail address: dlipovic@agr.hr (D. Filipovic).
abrasive wear resistance of tillage tools. Hardfacing is a
commonly employed method to improve surface properties
of tillage tools where an alloy is homogeneously deposited
onto the surface of a base material by different techniques
of welding, with the purpose of increasing hardness and
wear resistance [18,19]. A wide variety of hardfacing alloys
is commercially available for protection against wear, so
proper material selection becomes difcult. Selection of the
material should be on the basis of nished hardness,
microstructure, mechanical properties and wear resistance
of a particular type of steel [20].
The mouldboard plough is the most widespread tillage
tool in the world and the biggest consumer of energy in
agriculture [21]. For the design of an energy efcient
mouldboard plough in different operating conditions, an
understanding of the interactions of different ploughs, soils
and operational parameters is essential [22]. The plough
share and the mouldboard are the main soil engaging parts
of the mouldboard plough and the plough share is the part
with the highest wear rate [23]. The plough share wear not
only affects its working life but directly changes its initial
shape which is one of the most important factors
inuencing ploughing quality [24]. The wear of plough
shares also leads to frequent work stoppages for replace-
ment and contributes to high costs in labour, downtime
and parts, and results in direct costs through the important
effects of higher fuel consumption and lower rates of work
[8,25].
The aims of this experiment were to evaluate the wear of
regular and hardfaced plough shares made of different base
materials and hardfaced with a combination welding
techniques (shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) and
high-frequency induction welding (HFIW)) in eld condi-
tions and its inuence on fuel consumption and rate of
work in ploughing.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
This experiment was performed with the three furrow
reversible plough. The rst set of plough shares were
regular commercial shares made of steel alloyed with
1.16% Mn, 0.19% C, 0.3% Si, 0.014% P, 0.023% S, 0.23%
Cu, 0.17% Cr, 0.08% Ni and 0.01% Mo. The regular
shares were not especially treated by the producer for wear
protection and their average hardness was 498 HV. The
other plough share sets were made by the company Belje
workshop from material with the following components:
the rst set of hardfaced shares (HF-1) was made of steel
EN 10027 (S 355 JO) alloyed with 1.32% Mn, 0.17% C,
0.5% Si, 0.035% P, 0.03% S and 0.008% N, and the
second set (HF-2) of steel EN 50Mn7 alloyed with 1.7%
Mn, 0.49% C, 0.4% Si, 0.04% P, 0.04% S and 0.007% N.
The average hardness of basic material of HF-1 shares was
339 HV, and 287 HV of HF-2 shares. Then both plough
share sets were hardfaced by a combination of two welding
processes, namely SMAW and HFIW. SMAW is com-
monly used for hardfacing due to the low cost of electrodes
and easy application [18]. HFIW equipment has a
high degree of automation, but is rarely used because its
great initial investment [26]. Hardfacing of the plough
shares point was achieved by manual SMAW using
direct current with a reverse polarity. The average welding
parameters were: welding current 170 A, arc voltage 25 V,
and electrode traveling speed 0.2 mm/s. Hardfacing of
the plough shares edge was done by HFIW using
alternating current with a frequency of 50 Hz. The average
welding parameters were: welding current 45 A, welding
potential 400 V, and welding rate 1.2 m/min. The chemical
composition and mechanical properties of the hardfacing
material (producers data) are shown in Tables 1 and 2.
2.2. Methods
The determination of chemical composition and hard-
ness of shares material was done at Department of
materials, Faculty of mechanical engineering, University
of Zagreb. Chemical composition of steel used for tested
shares was determined by emission spectrometer LECO
GDS-750, while hardness was determined by hardness
tester ZWICK 3212 according to Vickers method.
The experimental eld was located in Baranja (45150
0
N,
18140
0
E), in the north-east part of Croatia. The area of
approximately 200 ha used for this experiment was chosen
as it is at with a uniform soil type and free of crop
residues. The experimental eld consisted of nine plots,
organized as randomized blocks with three replications.
The soil classication was determined according to the
textural triangle with sand, silt and clay content [27], and
the soil type was sandy clay. The particle size distribution
of this soil is presented in Table 3, while the average soil
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Table 1
The chemical composition of the hardfacing material (%)
Fe Cr C Co Ni Si Mn Mo
63.98 24.32 3.30 3.20 3.13 1.49 0.43 0.15
Table 2
The mechanical properties of the hardfacing material
Tensile strength
(N/mm
2
)
Yield strength
N/mm
2
Percentage
elongation (%)
Toughness
DVM (J)
Finished hardness
(HV)
1730 1400 6 38 571
Z. Horvat et al. / Tribology International 41 (2008) 778782 779
moisture during experiment is presented in Table 4. The
experiment was carried out with a four-wheel drive tractor
with an engine power of 129 kW and three furrow
reversible ploughs with a working width of 120 cm. The
average speed of the tractor during the experiment was
6.04 km/h and the average ploughing depth was 30.2 cm.
The experiment was focused on the plough shares
dimension changes and weight loss, fuel consumption and
rate of work. The measured dimensions were: the length of
the share point (a), and the width of the share on the front
of wing (b), in the middle (c) and on the rear part of share
(d), as presented in Fig. 1.
The measurement of dimension changes was carried out
using a digital vernier calliper with an accuracy of 0.01 mm.
For determining the weight loss of the plough share
materials, shares were separately weighed on a precision
electronic balance with an accuracy of 0.01 g. The fuel
consumption per hectare and the rate of work were
obtained by monitoring the tractor fuel consumption,
tilled area and time for ploughing with different plough
shares using the same tractor gear ratio and fuel control
level position.
The data recorded in this eld experiment were subjected
to analysis of variance (ANOVA) in accordance with the
experimental design (randomized blocks) using SAS
statistical package to quantify and evaluate the source of
variation. When the ANOVA indicated signicant differ-
ences, the Duncan multiple range test was used to compare
the mean results. Least signicant differences (LSD) were
calculated from standard errors of the difference of the
means using appropriate degrees of freedom. The differ-
ences had been considered as signicant if probability level
was 95% (Po0.05) and 99% (Po0.01).
3. Results and discussion
The decrease in particular plough share dimensions after
ploughing 60 ha are shown in Table 5. The dimension
losses were highest for regular shares, followed by HF-2
shares, and the lowest for HF-1 shares. Statistical analysis
of average dimension losses showed signicant differences
between regular and hardfaced plough shares. It was also
found that there were no signicant differences between the
hardfaced plough shares. The share point is the part of the
plough share subjected to the greatest dimension loss,
because of the stress concentration in the soil around this
zone (see also Owsiak [7]).
The total weight losses per hectare obtained from this
experiment are presented in Fig. 2. For the plough shares
whose surfaces were hardened by the combination techni-
que of hardfacing, less wear was recorded in comparison to
regular plough shares, and the experiment resulted in 7.0%
and 4.7% less wear for the hardfaced plough shares HF-1
and HF-2, respectively. The plough share wear in sandy
clay soil was consistent with the results of Milos et al. [28]
who reported that plough share weight loss in sandy soil
was 30150 g/ha, while plough share weight loss in clay
soils was 230 g/ha. The wear rate of shares in soil
increased with increasing sand fraction [25], and according
to Bayhan [29], the wear of plough shares is on average
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Table 3
The soil particle size distribution and soil texture
Particle size distribution (%) Soil texture
Clay Silt Sand Sandy clay
o2 mm 250 mm 502000 mm
37.3 11.0 51.7
Table 4
The soil moisture content during experiment (%)
Depth 010 cm 1020 cm 2030 cm
Minimum 15.81 14.53 12.75
Maximum 16.05 15.02 13.05
Average 15.95 14.81 12.91
Fig. 1. The measured dimensions of the plough shares: (a) the length of
the share point; (b) the width of share on the front of wing; (c), the middle
part of share; (d) the rear part of share.
Table 5
The average plough shares dimensions losses (mm)
Dimension a b c d
Regular 26.50

8.83

10.50

9.50

HF-1 7.50 4.33 5.16 5.00

HF-2 8.83 5.16 6.83 6.16

Signicantly different at Po0.05.

Signicantly different at Po0.01.

Regular
HF-1
HF-2
0
10
20
30
40
50
W
e
i
g
h
t

l
o
s
s

(
g
/
h
a
)
Fig. 2. The total plough shares weight losses per hectare.
Z. Horvat et al. / Tribology International 41 (2008) 778782 780
90210 g/ha. The results of this experiment showed that an
adequate hardfacing technique can enable less plough
share edge and point wear with minimal shape changes.
After 60 working hours standard plough shares were so
worn out that they no longer sustained the proper
ploughing depth, while hardfaced plough shares after an
equal period of work sustained their shape and sharpness
and were able to continue further ploughing.
The average fuel consumptions during 60 h of ploughing
with different plough shares are presented in Fig. 3. The
highest fuel consumption of 29.56 l/ha was achieved with
regular plough shares, followed by HF-2 plough shares,
3.2% less, and the lowest with HF-1 plough shares, 7.3%
less than regular plough shares. The draught force of a
worn tillage tool increased [24], and the lower wear of
hardfaced plough shares resulted in the shares edge and
point staying sharper longer reducing fuel consumption
[30]. According to Natsis et al. [8], when the cutting edge of
mouldboard plough share thickness increased from 1 to
6 mm, the fuel consumption increased by 41%.
The average rate of work during 60 h of ploughing with
different plough shares are presented in Fig. 4. The highest
work rate of 0.72 ha/h was achieved with HF-1 plough
shares, 5.9% higher than regular. The HF-2 plough shares
achieved a slightly lower rate of work than the HF-1
plough shares, but 2.9% higher than regular. Natsis et al.
[8] reported that the rate of work decreased by 30% when
the cutting edge of mouldboard plough share thickness
increased from 1 to 6 mm. The longer life of tillage tools
enables greater productivity not only by a higher rate of
work, but also through a reduction in changeover time of
plough shares [30].
The selling price of one regular plough share was 85.50h,
while the total costs of one share producing and hardfacing
in the company Belje workshop were 78.10h and 71.60h
for HF-1 and HF-2 plough shares, respectively. Consider-
ing plough shares wear, fuel consumption, rate of work and
proper expenses, this experiment proved that the hardfaced
shares achieved better results than regular shares. Since
both hardfaced plough shares were protected by the same
hardfacing technique, this protection method can be
recommended as an efcient solution for plough share
wear protection.
4. Conclusion
The dimension losses were signicantly lower for both
types of hardfaced plough shares compared to regular
shares.
The weight losses were also lower for both types of
hardfaced plough shares compared to standard shares,
but the differences were not signicant.
A lower fuel consumption and a higher rate of work in
ploughing compared to regular shares were achieved
with hardfaced plough shares.
The production costs of hardfaced plough shares
compared to regular shares were lower 3.0% and
11.1% for HF-1 and HF-2, respectively.
According to the overall results, this combination of two
welding processes can be recommended as efcient
solution of plough share wear protection.
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