Three-body abrasive wear of fine pearlite, nanostructured bainite and martensite

The abrasive wear of three metallurgical structures with radically different hardnesses has been investigated for the same steel. The particular steel concerned is a recent innovation capable of generating extremely fine distributions of crystals. The austenite in the alloy nevertheless has the capability of uniformly transforming into extremely fine pearlite, nanostructured bainite, and plate martensite. It is found that although the abrasion rates and wear coefficients are not very different for the three states, the mechanisms of abrasion are quite different. We report detailed characterisation experiments together with comparisons with commercially available steels subjected to identical tests.