Wear performance of steel plough tips on high-speed hydraulic turning ploughs

High-speed ploughs have been commonly used in deep cultivation operations in the southern Xinjiang region. The wear of the soil-touching parts of the plough body directly affects its longevity and the effectiveness of its soil-turning work. This paper presents an experimental study of abrasive wear on high-speed plough tips in the field, the variation of wear volume, length, width, thickness, edge angle, micro-hardness, and microscopic wear surface of 30MnB5 plough tips in 0–140 ha ploughing areas are investigated, and at the same time, the wear surface penetration (D_p) is calculated to analyse the wear micro-mechanism. The results showed that with the increase of cultivation area, gradually transitioned from the initial wear stage to the stable wear stage. Dimensional changes in wear length, width, thickness, and edge angle are concentrated at the tip of the plough. The surfacing layer on the tip exhibits good self-sharpening properties. Work hardening of the plough tip overlays and bases occurs with increasing ploughed area, with lower hardness of the base material showing more flaking pits and higher hardness of the overlays material showing more grooves. The D_p value of the surface layer and the base is less than 0.2, and the wear mechanism is micro-ploughing. The holes in the surfacing layer change the motion of the soil particles, causing the microscopic wear mechanism to change from micro-ploughing to impact wear and back to micro-ploughing. The results of this paper can provide a theoretical basis for the structure optimisation and material selection of plough tips.