ADHESIVE WEAR BEHAVIOUR OF ULTRA HIGH STRENGTH BAINITIC STEEL

Abstract

Ultra high strength bainitic steels have a number of desirable mechanical properties and have been viewed as candidate material for engineering applications. In the current work, an effort has been made to determine adhesive wear behaviour of ultra high strength bainitic steel. The wear tests were carried out on a pin-on-disc tribometer to study the behaviour of nano-structured carbide free bainitic steel. The sliding speed was 1 m/s for all the tests and normal loads of 10 N, 20 N and 30 N were used. The wear resistance was related to mass loss measured after the tests and that helped to determine specific wear rate of the material. Worn surfaces were characterized by using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Surface roughness was also obtained to familiarize the surface profile of samples after test. Nano-indentation hardness was also obtained in order to analyze the strain hardening effects beneath the contact surfaces. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique was used to quantify if there is transformation of any phases under high mechanical loading during wear and to analyse effect of loading on different parameters like strain, dislocation density and crystallite size.