Wear-Resistant Materials: Extending Component Life in High-Abrasion Applications

Wear components fail. That’s their job—they sacrifice themselves to protect more expensive parts. But how quickly they fail determines maintenance costs, downtime, and total cost of ownership. The right material choice can extend replacement intervals from weeks to years.

This guide covers material selection for common wear applications: sliding surfaces, bushings, liners, and guides.

Types of Wear

Before selecting materials, understand which wear mechanism dominates your application. Each type requires a different material strategy.

Adhesive Wear (Sliding Contact)

When two surfaces slide against each other under load, material transfers between them at contact points. This adhesive wear is the primary mechanism in bushings, bearings, slides, and guides. The solution involves selecting materials with low friction coefficients, ensuring compatible material pairings, and providing adequate lubrication when possible.

Abrasive Wear (Particle Erosion)

Hard particles cutting or gouging a softer surface causes abrasive wear. Sand, aggregate, ore, and abrasive slurries are common culprits in material handling applications. You can combat abrasive wear with high-hardness materials that resist cutting, or paradoxically, with soft materials that embed the particles rather than being cut by them.

Erosive Wear (Fluid Impact)

High-velocity fluids or particle-laden streams impacting surfaces cause erosive wear. Pipe elbows, pump housings, and conveyor chutes commonly experience this degradation pattern. Material hardness helps resist erosion, but geometry changes that reduce impact angle often prove equally effective.

Impact Wear

Repeated impact loading causes surface fatigue and material loss over time. Hammers, breaker bars, and impact zones experience this wear pattern. Pure hardness isn’t the answer here—toughness and fatigue resistance matter more than maximum hardness.

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Plastics for Wear Applications

UHMW Polyethylene

UHMW (Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene) dominates low-friction wear applications. Its extremely long polymer chains provide outstanding abrasion resistance at low cost, making it the default choice for conveyor guides, chute liners, and similar applications.

UHMW’s coefficient of friction ranges from 0.10 to 0.20, making it self-lubricating without requiring grease. The material shows excellent abrasion resistance in ASTM D1044 testing, typically losing only 15-20 mg of material. FDA compliant grades are available for food processing, and the operating temperature range spans -200°F to 180°F.

The most common applications include conveyor guides and wear strips, chute and hopper liners, chain guides, dock bumpers and fenders, star wheels and timing screws, and food processing components where FDA compliance matters.

UHMW does have limitations worth considering. The 180°F maximum temperature rules it out for hot applications. The material cannot be bonded easily, requiring mechanical fastening instead of adhesives. Under sustained high loads, UHMW creeps and deforms. Against sharp, hard abrasives, it performs worse than against rounded particles—a distinction that matters in aggregate handling.

Acetal (Delrin)

Acetal offers higher strength and stiffness than UHMW with respectable wear properties. It’s often specified for more precise wear components where dimensional stability matters as much as wear resistance.

The material’s coefficient of friction runs 0.20 to 0.35—higher than UHMW but acceptable for many applications. With tensile strength around 10,000 psi, acetal handles significantly more load than UHMW. Excellent dimensional stability and good fatigue resistance make it suitable for precision bushings, gears, sprockets, cams, and rollers where UHMW’s softness would be a liability.

The trade-offs include lower abrasion resistance than UHMW, higher friction, and vulnerability to strong acids. For pure wear resistance, UHMW usually wins; for precision and strength, acetal takes the lead.

Nylon (Polyamide)

Nylon combines good wear resistance with higher load capacity than UHMW. Oil-filled and MoS2-filled grades enhance the base material’s already reasonable lubricity, making nylon a versatile choice for bushings and bearings under moderate loads.

The coefficient of friction varies widely with fill material, ranging from 0.15 to 0.40. Higher strength and stiffness than UHMW, combined with good fatigue resistance, suit nylon for sprockets, gears, wear pads, rollers, and sheaves. Operating temperature reaches 200°F—slightly higher than UHMW.

Nylon’s main weakness is moisture absorption. In humid environments, the material swells and dimensions change, which can be problematic in precision fits. Lower abrasion resistance and higher friction compared to UHMW make it a second choice for pure wear applications.

PTFE and PTFE-Filled Materials

PTFE (Teflon) offers the lowest friction of any solid material—coefficient of friction from 0.04 to 0.10—but poor wear resistance in unfilled form. The solution is filled grades containing glass, carbon, or bronze, which dramatically improve wear performance (10-100x better than unfilled) while retaining much of the low friction character.

PTFE’s exceptional chemical resistance and wide temperature range (-400°F to 500°F) make it essential for high-temperature bearings, chemical processing equipment, non-lubricated sliding surfaces, piston rings, and seals. Backup rings and guide bands in hydraulic cylinders commonly use filled PTFE.

The limitations are significant: unfilled grades wear rapidly, the material costs substantially more than alternatives, and PTFE cold flows under load, requiring careful design to prevent creep-related failures.

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Metals for Wear Applications

Bronze Alloys

Bronze bearings have served rotating machinery for centuries. The alloy family offers various compositions addressing different wear conditions and load requirements.

SAE 660 (Bearing Bronze) serves as the standard bearing bronze with good wear properties and adequate strength. It requires lubrication but handles moderate loads at speeds up to 750 fpm in general-purpose bushings and thrust washers.

SAE 863 (Oil-Impregnated Bronze) is a sintered bronze impregnated with oil during manufacture. This self-lubricating material works well in light-duty bushings and low-speed bearings, particularly where lubrication points are inaccessible.

Aluminum Bronze (C95400) provides higher strength and better corrosion resistance than tin bronzes. It excels in heavy-duty bearings and marine equipment where high loads combine with corrosive environments.

Manganese Bronze (C86300) offers the highest strength in the bronze family, suitable for severe loads and impact conditions in heavy machinery bushings and gears.

Tool Steels

Hardened tool steels provide maximum wear resistance for severe abrasive environments where plastics and bronzes fall short.

D2 Tool Steel is a high-carbon, high-chromium die steel that air-hardens to 58-62 HRC. It offers excellent wear resistance with moderate toughness, commonly specified for dies, punches, wear plates, and industrial knives.

A2 Tool Steel is also air-hardening but provides better toughness than D2 at the cost of slightly lower wear resistance. It suits punches, forming tools, and wear components that experience impact loading.

O1 Tool Steel uses oil-hardening and offers good all-around properties for general tooling and wear parts without the extreme performance or specialized requirements of D2 or A2.

Wear-Resistant Steels

AR400, AR450, and AR500 are abrasion-resistant plate steels, with the number indicating approximate Brinell hardness. They line chutes, dump truck bodies, and mining equipment. Higher numbers mean harder material with more wear resistance but also more brittleness—AR500 cracks more easily than AR400.

Hardox and similar premium wear-resistant steels feature controlled chemistry and processing for severe abrasion environments in mining and earthmoving applications.

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Selection by Application

Conveyor Systems

Component	First Choice	Alternative
Wear strips/guides	UHMW	Acetal
Chain guides	UHMW	Nylon
Star wheels	UHMW (food)	Acetal
Idler bushings	Oil-impregnated bronze	UHMW
Drive sprocket bushings	Bronze	Nylon

Material Handling

Application	Moderate Abrasion	Severe Abrasion
Chute liners	UHMW	AR400/AR500
Hopper liners	UHMW	AR400
Truck bed liners	UHMW	AR400
Screens	AR400	Hardox

Rotating Equipment

Component	Light Duty	Heavy Duty
Bushings	Oil-impregnated bronze	SAE 660 bronze
Thrust washers	Acetal	Bronze
Wear rings	PTFE-filled	Bronze
Sleeve bearings	UHMW	Bronze

Hydraulic/Pneumatic

Component	Recommendation
Piston wear bands	PTFE + bronze fill
Guide rings	PTFE + glass fill
Backup rings	Acetal, PTFE
Rod bushings	Bronze, filled PTFE

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Design Considerations

Material Pairing

Some material combinations work well together; others cause accelerated wear through galling or adhesion. UHMW against steel works excellently, as does bronze against hardened steel, acetal against steel, and PTFE against almost anything. Avoid running aluminum against aluminum, stainless against stainless without lubrication, or similar-hardness metals in dry contact—all prone to galling.

Surface Finish

Counter-surfaces need to be hard enough to resist abrasion from the wear component while smooth enough to minimize abrasive wear on that component. Harder isn’t always better. For plastic wear components, a counter-surface finish of Ra 16-32 µin typically optimizes both factors.

Lubrication

Self-lubricating materials like UHMW and oil-filled bronze reduce maintenance requirements but may not match lubricated systems for maximum load capacity, minimum friction, or maximum life. Where lubrication is practical and maintainable, consider using it rather than relying entirely on self-lubricating materials.

Replacement Strategy

Design wear components for easy replacement. Use standard sizes where possible for easier sourcing of replacements. Ensure accessible mounting that doesn’t require major disassembly. Include clear wear indicators or inspection points so operators know when components need attention. Maintain inventory of replacement parts to minimize downtime when changes become necessary.

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Total Cost Analysis

The cheapest material isn’t always the lowest cost. A proper analysis considers material cost per piece, installation labor per change, downtime cost per hour of lost production, and change frequency per year.

Example comparison:

Factor	UHMW	AR400
Material cost	$200	$800
Life (months)	3	12
Changes per year	4	1
Change labor	$150	$400
Annual material	$800	$800
Annual labor	$600	$400
Annual total	$1,400	$1,200

In this example, the more expensive AR400 costs less annually due to its longer service life. Every application is different—run the numbers for your specific situation before assuming the cheapest material saves money.

Working With NextGen Components

We stock wear materials across the spectrum: UHMW, acetal, nylon, PTFE, and bearing bronzes. Our team can help analyze your wear application and recommend materials that balance performance and cost.

Dealing with a wear problem? Send us your application details and we’ll suggest solutions.