A study on the wear behavior of hardened medium carbon steel

It is well known that the mechanical properties such as strength and hardness of structural steel are usually enhanced by the martensite-phase transformation method. In many industrial applications, hardness has always been used as an index to reflect the wear-resistance performance. As a result, steel is quenched to a large extent in order to increase the hardness and wear-resistance performance. In general, from the wear mechanism, no exact relationship between the hardness and wear resistance of materials can be formulated. Also there are few conclusive studies on the effects of running procedures on wear-resistance performance. Therefore, the friction behavior of S45C carbon steel with and without a quenching process was evaluated by a rotating tribometer under various test conditions. The experimental results show that the running conditions cause a great influence on the wear-resistance performance of the materials. Under low speed and light apparent pressure conditions, the quenched specimens have high wear-resistance performance. Contrarily, at high speed and heavy loading, the wear-resistance performance of hardened specimens decreases due to tempering effects at the rubbing surface when the contact temperature becomes increased. Therefore, this causes more severe wear to the hardened specimens than to the unhardened specimens.