Abrasive Wear behaviour of a high carbon steel: effects of microstructure and experimental parameters and correlation with mechanical properties

This investigation deals with the observations made towards understanding the role of interlamellar spacing on the high-stress abrasive wear behaviour of a high carbon steel. The samples revealed near-eutectoid (pearlitic) structure. The interlamellar spacing was varied by altering the austenitization temperature. Abrasion tests were conducted over a range of applied load, sliding speed, travel distance and abrasive size. Mechanical properties such as hardness, impact toughness and tensile strength, yield strength and elongation at fracture of the samples were also evaluated. The nature of dependence of abrasive wear rate and the measured mechanical properties on material related factors like interlamellar spacing of the samples has been analyzed. The study indicates that the wear rate does not follow a Hall-Petch relationship with the interlamellar spacing of the samples unlike hardness and yield strength. An analysis of the influence of abrasion test parameters suggested the wear rate to increase sharply with load initially. This was followed by a lower rate of increase or even a reduction in wear rate at higher loads depending on the interlamellar spacing of the samples. Increasing abrasive size caused the wear rate to practically remain unaffected initially. This was followed by a sharp increase in wear rate beyond a critical abrasive size. Increasing speed led to higher wear rates upto a critical sliding speed beyond which the wear rate decreased with a further increase in speed. The varying nature of influence of interlamellar spacing on mechanical properties and interlamellar spacing and abrasion test parameters on the wear response of the samples has been discussed in terms of wear-induced subsurface work hardening/deformation of the specimens, deteriorating cutting efficiency of the abrasive particles, stability of the deformed (transfer) layer in the near vicinity of the wear surface during abrasion and hardening of ferrite in the (eutectoid) cementite–ferrite (pearlite) mixture in the steel prior to testing