On the morphology of the abrasive wear on ploughshares by means of 3D scanning

During tillage, soil engaging tools are exposed to very critical working conditions due to soil friction. This produces an abrasive wear which needs to be monitored in order to avoid high costs for machine maintenance and fuel consumption and a deterioration of tillage quality. A commonly used method for wear diagnosis is the evaluation of the mass loss and volume change after a prolonged component usage. The instruments generally used for the assessment of these two quantities give only general and punctual information about the wear. Modern three-dimensional scanning technologies allow for creating a numerical model of the worn component and thereby extracting knowledge of the wear pattern. In this paper, the wear pattern of four ploughshares of a semi-mounted plough were analysed and compared. Each ploughshare was scanned by means of a structured blue-light 3D scanner before and after a prolonged field usage. From the scans, the cutting edge profile, described with three parameters, and the blade profile were calculated. The wear pattern and the volume losses were numerically calculated through Hausdorff's method and deviation analysis. Results of the experiments showed that cutting edge profile parameter of ploughshares could differ significantly from each other. Moreover, even if the wear pattern was very similar in shape for all the ploughshares, a large variability in volume losses was observed between the ploughshares. The adopted methodology permits to easily evaluate the wear pattern of tillage tools.