This article presents the application of the ring-on-ring test to investigate some of the important factors affecting the abrasive and corrosion wear of a face seal used in the sugar industry. The test involves the sliding contact between two steel rings working in different conditions such as mechanic, abrasive, corrosive extortions and its combination. Rings were made of the C45 steel and the surface layers were modified by heat and thermochemical treatment such as normalizing, flame hardening, nitriding and chrome diffusion. Maximum wear of the sample after tests under mechanic, abrasive and corrosion extortion were obtained. For C45 steel without surface modification the biggest wear was obtained for mechanical, abrasive and corrosive extortion and equals 0.0138 g. This value was three times bigger than the result for the mechanical extortion and ten times than for the corrosive conditions. For individual research options the percentage increase or decrease in wear resistance in relation to the normalized surface layer was determined. In the corrosive extortion the highest increase (90%) of wear resistance was recorded for the chrome layer relative to normalizing sample. The main conclusion of the paper is that the wear effect caused by all factors-mechanical, abrasive and corrosive-is not a straight sum of values of wear.
Keywords: abrasive wear; corrosion wear; heat treatment; ring-on-ring test; sliding contact.