The design concept used to provide
a structure which might result in wear
resistance was to try to balance the volume
of specific carbide types with the
hardness of the carbides. An obvious first
step is to simply increase the amount of
chromium and carbon in the alloy composition.
However, this simple approach
runs into problems above a certain chromium
level where the alloys produced
have matrices which are no longer heat
treatable as the excess chromium stabilises
a ferritic matrix so that the austenite
to martensite transformation cannot be
realised. Alloys of this type have been
reported previously [6, 7].