Weor, 84 (1983) 361 - 373 361

A LARGE-SCALE IMPACT SPALLING TEST

R. BLICKENSDERFER and J. H. TYLCZAK

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, Albany Research Center, P.O. Box
70, Albany, OR 97321 (U.S.A.)
(Received August 18,1982)

Summary

A unique test apparatus is described that effectively produces spalling

on wear-resistant alloys and can be used to study the causes of spalling. The
work was conducted by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of
Mines, as part of an effort to minimize the consumption of strategic mate-
rials used during the mining and processing of minerals. The test utilizes balls
75 mm in diameter made of the test alloys, which are dropped a distance of
3.5 m. Multiple impacts over a range of energy are produced between the
balls. The unique design of the test apparatus provides a multiplying effect
that results in 30 000 or more total impacts per hour on 20 or so test alloys.
The four major types of failure that were observed on 22 commercial and
experimental alloys that received up to 300 000 impacts are discussed.

1. Introduction

Significant amounts of metal are lost annually by the wear of equip-

ment used for mining and processing minerals. The Bureau of Mines, U.S.
Department of the Interior, is conducting research on the causes of wear and
ways to reduce it, especially for wear losses of strategic and critical metals,
such as chromium, manganese and cobalt.
The abrasive wear that occurs during crushing and grinding has led to
the development of increasingly wear-resistant alloys. White cast irons, con-
taining high percentages of chromium, are especially abrasion resistant and
have become popular for applications such as mill liners and crusher plates.
However, white cast iron has a propensity to spall and one spall may rep-
resent a greater loss of metal than many hours of abrasive wear. Spalling and
fracture of liner plates and balls, especially in larger grinding mills, has be-
come a problem. As the diameter of ball mills has increased (to as much as
10 m) the losses caused by spalling and fracturing have increased.
To date, no controlled test for large-scale spalling has been devised;
therefore the effects of metallurgical variables have not been established. In

0043-1648/83/0000-0000/$03.00 0 Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands

362

some of the earliest tests on wear in ball mills, Ellis (11 found no spalling
on 25 mm balls in a mill 30 cm in diameter and Norman and Loeb [ 21 like-
wise found no spalling on 75 mm balls in a mill 90 cm in diameter. In
marked-ball studies in commercial mills, Norman and Loeb [2] did observe
occasional spalling in a mill 2.75 m in diameter, the largest available at that
time. Although field data provide the best overall criteria for evaluating wear
performance, field tests lack control and are time consuming; furthermore,
the time at which spalling or fracture occurs cannot be clearly determined
under service conditions. Thus, the need for a controlled spalling test exists.
An apparatus for effectively producing spalling, fracture and surface degrada-
tion, without abrasion, under reproducible and repeatable conditions is
described in the present paper. Studies on the causes of spalling are under
way.

2. Experimental procedure

The concept of the present design evolved after many other designs had
been conceived and some of them constructed and tried. A ball-on-plate
machine, similar to the machines used by Dixon [3], Durman [4] and Farge
and Barclay [ 51 was constructed first, but it was realized that tremendously
long operating times would be required to produce the large numbers of im-
pacts necessary to produce spalling of the balls. The concept of the present
design is based on a device used in the demonstration of the physics of the
conservation of momentum. The device consists of a frame that supports
a line of six or seven balls in contact, each ball hanging from a pair of strings.
Letting a ball at one end swing into the second ball produces collisions down
the line of balls that make the ball on the other end swing away. We at-
tempted this with steel balls 75 mm in diameter suspended by wires 3 m in
length. Although the device was quite spectacular, any attempt to keep the
balls aligned during. operation was hopeless. Furthermore, the balls always
made contact at the same spot unlike a freely falling ball in a ball mill, which
receives impacts at random over the entire surface. Thus, the concept evolved
of confining the balls inside a tube and letting the initial ball fail freely.
A schematic ~angement of the equipment devised for producing large
numbers of impacts between balls is shown in Fig. 1. Typically, the system
operates with about 22 test balls, 18 are in the curved tube at any one time,
while four are in the return leg. From the top of the machine, a ball drops
a distance of 3.5 m to impact the line of balls confined in the curved tube.
The last ball in the tube immediately pops out with just enough energy to
send it down the ramp to the conveyer, where it is again lifted to the top.
The fall of 3.5 m is believed to represent impact conditions in a ball mill of
considerably greater diameter. The test apparatus is more severe than a real
mill because a real mill contains ore that cushions the blow.
 363

8.1 cm ID x 8.9 cm 00
steel tube

Sound insulotion-

Frame

A pprox.
drop Conveyer

Conveyer drive motor- I

r Buckets,

75 mm
40cm

dia test
apart

balls

8.1 cm IDx IO cm ODN

steel tube

Fig. 1. Schematic arrangement of the equipment:

I!
ID, inner diameter; OD, outer diameter.

A light-weight steel frame supports the tubes, ramps and conveyer, as

seen in Fig. 2. A vertical thin-walled steel tube, 8.4 cm in inside diameter,
guides the ball during its free fall. The tube is vented with holes at the bot-
tom to minimize the build-up of air pressure that tends to slow the ball. The
bottom end of the light-weight tube is connected with a flange joint to the
curved thick-walled tube. This tube, with an inner diameter of 8.1 cm and an
outer diameter of 10.2 cm, is straight where the initial ball collision takes
place; beyond this it makes a curve of 135O with a radius of about 0.5 m.
The curve was formed in the thick-walled tube by first making saw cuts at
364

Fig. 2. Overall view of the equipment.

intervals of 1.5 cm, and then bending and welding. Unwelded parts of the
kerfs and additional drilled holes allowed small pieces of ball debris to fall
out during testing. Because large pieces of fractured balls cause the balls to
jam in the curved tube, it was attached only with bolts at each end to facili-
tate its removal. The exit end of the curved tube has a guard that prevents
the balls from popping over the ramp.
From the exit end of the tube, a ramp carries the balls to the conveyer.
Figure 3 shows the end of the curved tube, the guard, the ramp and the
bottom of the conveyer with one of its plastic buckets. Midway along the
ramp are the optical pick-ups that detect each passing ball and actuate the
counter. The conveyer is a reinforced rubber belt 23 cm in width with a
bucket bolted every 40 cm; each bucket can hold two balls. The conveyer is
driven by an electric motor rated at 560 W at a speed of 38 m min-‘. The rela-
tively high speed of the conveyer is required to throw the ball out of the
bucket as it passes over the top pulley. The upper ramp is the width of two
balls and drops the balls onto a narrower single-file ramp located at a right
angle to the upper ramp. The single-file ramp guides the balls to the light-
weight steel tube where the balls drop. Safety-guards cover the upper ramps
and the conveyer belt to prevent the balls from dropping unexpectedly.
 365

Fig. 3. Photograph showing the discharge and the loading ramps.

2.2. Procedure
To start up the system, the curved tube is first filled with approximate-
ly 18 balls. With the conveyer running, the remaining four balls are loaded
onto the bottom ramp. The conveyer carries the balls to the top and flings
them into the upper ramp, then the balls continue in the cycle. During
“steady state” operation the conveyer picks up one or two balls every one
to six buckets, depending on the total number of balls in the system and
their momentary grouping. The machine is run unattended, usually over-
night because of the loud noise.
A run is concluded when any of the balls suffers a failure such that
it jams the flow of balls through the tube or fails to roll down one of the
ramps because of a spall or fracture. A count of the impacts is then read
from the counter. To unjam the system, it may be necessary to unbolt the
curved tube and to pour the balls out; the machine can then be restarted for
continued testing.
The equipment allows occasional random reversals of pairs of balls.
Over a period of time, this allows each ball to impact all the other balls in
the system. This prevents the occurrence of a bias caused by the same pairs
of balls always impacting each other. The reversing is done by the arrange-
ment of single- and double-width ramps. Figure 3 shows the single-file ramp
that leads to the loading chute which is the width of two balls. Occasionally,
two balls will load into one conveyer bucket. After exiting onto the double-
width ramp at the top, the balls roll into the single-file ramp at right angles
to the double-width ramp. Here the balls will be in reverse order. Thus, the
order of impacting balls gradually changes as the test progresses.
366

2.3. Impact accounting

The accounting of the number of impacts on each ball must be done
carefully because failed balls are removed and new balls added as the test
progresses. Individual records were kept on each ball. With each ball drop
the counter adds one count and each ball in the tube receives two impacts,
one on each side, except the balls entering and leaving the tube, which
receive only one impact. Thus the number of impacts per ball drop is twice
the number of balls in the tube. The total number of impacts on all the balls
in the tube during one run is therefore
N = 2B,C
where B, is the average number of balls in the tube and C is the number of
balls counted (the number of balls that had dropped).
For each ball in the system the number of impacts is a fraction of the
total number of impacts:
2B, C
Ni = _
BS
where B, is the number of balls in the system. Because B, may vary between
runs as balls are added or removed from testing and Bt may change slightly
(it decreases as the balls wear smoother), the equation can be generalized for
a number m of runs while a given ball is in the system. Thus the total num-
ber N,, of impacts on a given ball after m runs is
m 2BtjCj
N,,(total) = 2 -
j=i &j

3. Test specimens

3.1. Types of alloys

Alloy compositions typical of those commonly used for mill liners and
milling balls were selected. The alloys were classified into four categories:
cast irons, cast steels, manganese austenitic steels and wrought steels.
Six types of cast iron were tested. They included one gray cast iron and
five white cast irons with chromium contents ranging from 9 to 25 wt.%.
Four types of cast steels ranging from low alloy content to 6 wt.% Cr were
evaluated. The four manganese austenitic steels included two lean types of
6 wt.% Mn and a Hadfield steel with 12 wt.% Mn forged and as cast. The
wrought steels were of relatively low alloy content and were hot forged into
balls 75 mm in diameter. Six wrought types were supplied by four commer-
cial producers, one was forged by another laboratory and one was forged at
the Albany Research Center.

3.2. Specimen preparation

The commercial balls were prepared by the manufacturer; neither the
melting method nor the heat treatment is known. The laboratory-wrought
 367

balls were forged in closed dies and subsequently heat treated. All other balls
were cast in sand molds by a commercial foundry or by our laboratory
foundry, with three balls per casting. The metal was air melted in an induc-
tion furnace with charges of 15 - 30 kg per heat. Cast balls were heat treated
and tempered in a manner suitable for each composition. At temperatures
below 1000 “C the balls were heated in cast iron chips to prevent decarbu-
rization. When they were heated at higher temperatures, the balls were
wrapped in stainless steel foil to prevent oxidation and decarburization.
Some balls were tested in the as-cast condition.

3.3. Ball marking system

Investigators have been known to identify balls by cutting slots or by
drilling small holes. To minimize the effect of ball marks on spalling or frac-
ture, a system using two or three flat spots and one groove was devised for
the present tests. The system is similar to crystallographic orientation nota-
tion, as shown in Fig. 4, and provides identification for 169 balls. The first
flat spot defines the x axis intersection with the surface of the ball. Thus,
the direction of this spot normal from the center of the ball is [loo] . The
shallow groove ground on the ball touches the first flat spot and defines the
equator and the direction toward the y axis. These two marks establish an
orthogonal coordinate system within the ball. For cast balls the ground-off
gate was convenient to use as the [ 1001 direction and the parting line as the
equator. The second flat spot can be ground anywhere on the ball and is
defined by the direction of its normal. For simplification and ease of iden-
tification, we chose to use only the 90” and 45” ([loo] and [IlO]) direc-
tions. Thus the second spot provided 13 identifications. A third flat spot can
be used to provide 13 X 12 = 156 additional identifications. For record-
keeping purposes the directions of each spot normal on a ball were recorded,
e.g. [loo] [OiO] for two spots or [loo] [LOO] [Oil] for three spots.

rapII

Porting line, on
cast balls

roave from
8 1, used an

Fig. 4. Ball identification system showing the flat spots which were ground on the ball.
368

4. Results and discussion

The test equipment was capable of producing about 10 000 - 15 000

ball drops (or over half a million ball-on-ball impacts) overnight. This high
rate of production of impacts accomplished spalling and other types of fail-
ures in a relatively short time. Of course, when a ball failure jammed the
machine during the night, it shortened the run. The equipment held up quite
well in service. After the first month of operation, a broken weld was found
and it was not unusual to break a weld after every 50 000 or so additional
ball drops. Most of the broken welds occurred along the curved tube and
were easily rewelded.

4.1. Types of failure

The types of failure and number of impacts withstood by the various
balls are shown in the bar graph in Fig. 5. Four different types of metallur-
gical failures were observed: spalling, minispalling, flaking and breakage. All

Specimen Description Brine/l Number

hardness of
iHB 30001 balls

castirons
24 3C~kY.v alloy 627 3
41 SCr-Ni, Ni hard IV 622
42 15Cr-3Mo 540
19 ZOC-2Mo 680
43 ZOCr-ZMo~lCu, as cast 578
44 25Cr-HC-250 648

Cast stee/s
25 Low alloy, 12s 375
36 Low alloy, AR360 370
37 ZCr-0.5Mo 780
30 6Cr- 1Mo 643

Manganese austenitic steels

40 GMn-1Mo. cast 595 3
39 6Mn-2Cr- 1MO, cast 461 3
34 12Mn. cast 200
56 12Mn, forged 226

Wrought steek
51 Commercial ball A 712 2
9 Commercial ball B 740 14
52 Commercial ball C 627 2
76 Commercial ball Cz 321 4
57 Commercial ball F 352 1
58 Commercial ball I 670 8
55 Univ. Calif. “Quatough” 411
23 ALRC Cr-MO 627
100 I50 200 250 300
IMPACTS, IO3

Fig. 5. Types of materials and the test results.

 369

Fig. 6. Spalling of a ball 75 mm in diameter (specimen 41C; number of impacts, 192 000).

the failures seemed to be caused by some combination of fatigue and high

compressive stress that developed around the outer shell of the ball.
Spalling failure, as shown in Fig, 6, was observed mainly in the cast
irons and a few cast steels. Spalls were 2 - 5 cm in diameter and up to 1 cm
thick in the center. The failure is believed to start beneath the surface with a
fatigue crack. The crack propagates more or less parallel to the surface but
eventually intersects the surface, whereupon the spall fails off. We observed
spalls in the process of formation where a crack extended from one-half to
three-quarters of the way around an imminent spall. For those alloys that
spalled, the spalling normally began at fewer than 50 000 impacts. The balls
that spalled had an average Brine11 hardness of 610. Not all the alloys spalled
at the same rate. For example, specimens 24 and 37 were too spalled to roll
through the test machine after 100 000 impacts but specimens 41 and 44
were tested to 300 000 impacts.
A second type of failure we observed we call “minispalling”. It results
in the formation of oval and crescent pits, typically 2 - 4 mm across and 2 - 3
mm deep, as illustrated in Fig. 7. The pits appeared after 100 000 - 150 000
or more impacts and were not associated with conventional spalling. The pits
usually appeared to be smooth and polished on the bottom. This indicates
that the initial fracture existed over a period of time during which the ball
continued to be impacted. We believe that a minispall forms by a fatigue
crack that propagates from the surface into a region of lower compressive
stress; after some time, a second fracture between the root and the surface
occurs and allows the piece of material to fall out. The shape of a minispall,
which is about as wide as it is deep, differs from that of the usual spall,
which is much wider. Minispalling was observed on three types of alloys with
Fig. 7. Minispalling of a ball 75 mm in diameter (specimen 52; number of impacts,
309 000).

Fig. 8. Flaking of a ball 75 mm in diameter (specimen 76; number of impacts, 221000).

hardness ranging from 627 to 712 HB and on the manganese alloys, which
were quite soft initially but which work hardened to about 550 HB.
Flaking, the third type of failure observed, was the formation of very
thin flakes that resulted from the extreme surface fatigue and cold work of
the relatively soft low alloy steels. The hardness of balls that flaked was
below 400 HB. At least 50 000 - 100 000 impacts were required to produce
the degree of work hardening needed to develop flakes. The ball shown in
Fig. 8 has typical thin flakes attached to its surface. As the flakes developed,
 371

Fig. 9. Breakage of a ball 75 mm in diameter (specimen 58D; number of impacts, 38 000).

they gradually came loose from the ball and eventually fell off. Flaking is
not observed in a real ball mill, undoubtedly because abrasive wear of the
surface by the ore dominates the wear process. Flakes were examined by
transmission electron microscopy. The thin regions of the flakes that could
be penetrated by electrons revealed extreme cold work and were estimated
to be less than 10m6 cm thick.
Breakage, the fourth type of failure, was a complete fracture of the ball
and generally occurred after relatively few impacts (a few thousand to
50 000). Many of these fractures passed near the center of the ball. Some-
times breakage took place spontaneously within several hours of the end of a
test run. Figure 9 shows a broken ball with its typical work-hardened rim
that extends about 5 mm below the surface. It is believed that the fracture
pattern reveals the rim region because of the high compressive stress there.
Static equilibrium requires that the outer compressive forces should be
balanced by inner tensile forces. It is believed that the ball breaks when the
tensile stress at some point in the core exceeds the fatigue strength. The
break is sudden, almost explosive, because of the stored energy in the rim
and core. The average hardness of the four alloys that failed by breakage was
667 HB.

4.2. Energy distribution

The distribution of energy received by each ball in the curved tube
during one ball drop was calculated approximately. The velocity of a falling
ball just before impact was measured by light beam interruption as 7.71 m
s-l. For a typical ball mass of 1.8 kg, the energy delivered to the first ball
was 54 J. The energy of the last ball, calculated from its exit velocity, was
5 J. The calculated energy delivered to the intermediate balls decreases along
the tube, as shown in Fig. 10. The energy distribution approximates to an
exponential decay and for 18 identical balls decreases by 12.4% of the ener-
372

En+ry BALL POSITION IN TUBE EXII

Fig. 10. Energy distribution for 18 balls in the tube: 0, energy input; n, energy dissipated.

gy incident upon each ball. The energy dissipated at each ball is also shown
in Fig. 10 and ranges from 6.7 J initially to 0.7 J at the last ball. It is not
known what fraction of the energy is dissipated as friction between the ball
and tube, internal friction within the ball as heat, plastic deformation of the
ball as heat, and cold work of the ball as accumulative stored energy.
Measurements of the time of contact between commercial steel low
alloy balls gave approximately 0.1 ms, which agrees with theoretical calcula-
tions 163. The area of contact and the maximum force (stress) between balls
were not measured.

4.3. Impact pattern and reproducibility

As a ball traverses the tube, does it receive all 40 impacts on the same
two opposite spots or is there some rotation of the ball? To answer this
question, several painted balls were put into the system. After one pass
through the tube, the impact spots were found to be almost randomly dis-
tributed over the surface of the ball. However, a ball with a large flat spot,
such as that caused by a large spall, could be expected to cease rotation in
the tube after it reaches a close-packed arrangement in the tube. In this case,
impacts would be concentrated on the flat spot. Nevertheless, we observed
an essentially random distribution of spalls on balls that did spall.
However, the balls that were soft enough to develop flaking tended to
develop a regular pattern of flat spots after a very large number of impacts,
half a million or so. Interestingly, their shape approached a dodecahedron.
Apparently, this shape allowed the closest packing array in the tube.
The degree of reproducibility of test results is not yet known. The
severity of impacts is undoubtedly greater for very hard balls than for softer
balls that suffer more plastic deformation. When running a variety of alloys,
as in the present test, the average severity of impacts is intermediate. The
effect of the severity of impact (ball hardness) on the number of impacts to
produce fracture or spalling for a given alloy will be considered in the
future.
 373

5. Conclusions

A test procedure was devised in which spalling, fracture and other sur-
face effects could be produced in relatively short times by multiple impacts
between balls. The machine can be run unattended. Severe spalling or break-
age of a ball stops the test, thereby allowing the number of impacts at failure
to be accurately determined. An accurate counting of the number of impacts
on each ball can be maintained while balls are added to or removed from
the test.
64 commercially forged and cast balls of 22 types were evaluated. In
general, the hardest balls (with hardness greater than 670 HB) failed by
breakage after relatively few thousands of impacts or suffered severe spalling
as the number of impacts increased beyond about 50 000. Balls that did not
break or spall eventually minispalled after 100 000 - 150 000 impacts. The
softer balls (with hardness less than 400 HB) neither broke, spalled nor
minispalled but after 50 000 - 100 000 impacts they developed an extremely
cold-worked surface that began to flake because of surface fatigue.
It is believed that the ability to produce large-scale spalling in the labo-
ratory under controlled conditions will lead to a better understanding of
the mechanism of spalling and how to reduce it.

References

1 0. W. Ellis, Proc. 34th Annu. Conf. of the Inst. Br. Foundrymen, June 1937.
2 T. E. Norman and C. M. Loeb, Jr., Trans. AZME, 176 (1948) 490 - 526.
3 R. H. T. Dixon, J. Iron Steel Inst., 197 (January 1961) 40 - 48.
4 R. W. Durman, Foundry Dade J., 134 (1973) 645 - 651.
5 J. C. Farge and G. A. Barclay, in R. Q. Barr (ed.), Proc. Symp. Materials for the Mining
Industry, Vail, CO, July 30 - 31, 1974, Climax Molybdenum Co., Greenwich, CT,
1975, pp. 189 - 199.
6 P. A. Engel, Impact Wear of Materials, Elsevier, New York, 1978.