Improved wear resistance of medium carbon microalloyed bainitic steels

A study on wear behavior of two medium carbon microalloyed steels has been carried out. Isothermal annealing has been performed on these steels in order to make pearlitic and bainitic morphologies and wear behavior of both the morphologies has been studied. The isothermal transformation temperatures for producing both the phases are chosen to produce finer to finest length scales in the pearlitic and bainitic microstructures. Further, the specimens are tested under dry sliding wear condition with varying normal load from 20 to 50 N and frequency from 5 to 11 Hz. Wear volume and wear rate of bainitic microstructure have been observed one order of magnitude less than that of the pearlitic steel. This is attributed to the higher hardness, higher dislocation density and much finer distribution of austenite–cementite aggregate phase throughout the bainite microstructure.