Tribo-metallographic behavior of high carbon steels in dry sliding I. Wearmechanisms and their transition

The wear mechanisms and their transitions of 52100 and 1080 steels with Var ious microstructures in dry sliding were systematically studied by wear tes ting and SEM observations of worn surfaces and wear particles. The results show that there are three dominant wear mechanisms, i.e., mild wear charact erized by oxidation, severe wear characterized by adhesion and delamination , and melting wear, appeared in succession with increasing normal load and/ or speed. The transition of wear mechanisms depends mainly upon the conditi ons of testing. The microstructure of steels have almost no remarkable effe ct on the general law of the transition of wear mechanisms. On the basis of calculating the wear rate and analyzing the morphology of worn surfaces an d wear particles, a criterion was suggested, by which one can easily identi fy the transition from mild wear to severe wear. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.