ABSTRACT
Earthmoving, mining, and minerals processing each involve frequent, and often severe, mechanical interactions between metals, and between metals and abrasive nonmetallic and metallic materials (i.e., mineral bearing ores). The abrasive nature of ores causes significant wear to extracting, handling, and processing equipment. Consequently, wear in earthmoving, mining, and minerals processing operations results in the removal of large amounts of material from the wear surfaces of scraping, digging, and ore processing equipment. From an energy point of view, material wear of this nature is classified as an indirect tribological loss (Imhoff et al., 1985). Additionally, a significant amount of energy is expended to overcome frictional forces in the operation of all earthmoving, mining, and minerals processing machinery (i.e., a direct tribological loss). However, in these particular processes, wear losses are more than five times those of frictional losses (Imhoff et al., 1985).
