Effect of carbon contents on dry sliding wear behavior of high vanadium high speed steel

Compared with high chromium cast iron (HiCr), dry sliding wear behavior of high vanadium high speed steel (HVHSS) containing different amounts of carbon was investigated against a counter-face of 40Cr rings using a block-on-ring setup. Six HVHSS samples with 1.58–2.92 wt% carbon contents were prepared and tested under same conditions to investigate the effect of carbon. The results showed that all HVHSS samples possessed a superior wear resistance over HiCr, and the sample HVHSS4 with 2.58 wt% carbon possessed the highest wear resistance, which was further investigated under the normal load varying from 300 N to 500 N whilst the other wear parameters were kept constant. It was found that the wear loss of both HVHSS4 and HiCr samples increased with the increase of the applied normal loads, but at different increasing rates due to the transition of wear mechanism from micro-cutting to micro-cracking for HiCr.