Wear Behaviour of Heat Treated 100Cr6 Steels

Abstract

In this study, several heat treatments were applied to DIN 100Cr6 steel to obtain different matrices. In the first stage of the study, solution annealing treatment was applied to the steel and cooling was carried out in various media (furnace, oil, and salt bath). In order to eliminate the stresses after transformation from austenization, a low temperature tempering treatment was applied to the quenched samples. All heat treated samples were examined using light microscopy after metallographic preparations. In the second step, ‘ball-on-disc’ type tribometer was used to determine the friction coefficient of the steels depending on the matrix phase. Weight loss was recorded and the friction coefficient versus distance was plotted for each steel. Worn surfaces of the steels were examined using scanning electron microscopy to characterize the wear mechanisms. It turned out that (i) pearlitic, bainitic and martensitic matrices could be obtained depending on the cooling medium, (ii) martensitic matrix had higher wear resistance based on its weight loss, (iii) abrasive and adhesive wear tracks were present on the worn surfaces of the steels.

Tribological Response of Heat Treated AISI 52100 Steels Against Steel and Ceramic Counterparts

“…Hardening through a martensitic matrix in microstructure is one of the methods to obtain a wear resistant steel structure but its lack of toughness is a major shortcoming in these group of steel alloys. There are plenty of studies indicating the advantageous use of bainitic or tempered martensitic structures in wear resistant applications [1,[8][9].…”

“…For wear characterization, "ball-on-disk" type sliding test in dry condition according to ASTM G99-05 Standard [10] were carried out using a tribometer from Nanovea. Apart from previous studies [8][9], two variants as counterpart were used against flat AISI 52100 bearing steel specimens. These counterparts are pure alumina and DIN 100Cr6 (equivalent to AISI 52100) steel balls.…”

“…Because proeutectoid cementite can easily be formed at prior austenite grain boundaries on cooling, and hence resulting an inappropriate microstructure in terms of rolling contact resistance. The spheroidization treatment before machining and hardening can eliminate that unfavorable carbide network morphology in microstructure and so enhance rolling wear resistance [1,3,[6][7].Previous studies [8][9] showed that the bearing steels with bainitic matrices or tempered at relatively higher temperatures martensitic microstructures yield advantageous wear resistant parts for the applications that mentioned above. There was a lack of harder counterpart condition in dry sliding contact pairs in those studies.…”

“…The main purpose of this study was to evaluate heat treated bearing steels in wear test against harder ceramic counterparts to see if there are any difference between them in terms of wear resistance under the tribological loading, which is mainly driven by abrasive wear mechanism rather than adhesive one that compared in previous studies [8][9]. A recently published novel method [11][12] enables to obtain profilometric measurements on wear track with precise volumetric wear loss values calculating from the math formulae based on the track profile geometry formed during the wear test.…”

Wear Performance of a Laser Surface Hardened ASTM 4118 Steel

“…hile the contact surfaces are subjected to repeated heavy stress, they still must maintain high precision and rotational accuracy. Thus, the contact surfaces must be made of material that has high hardness and good dimensional stability and is resistant to fatigue and wear [1][2][3][4][5].To achieve these goals common surface modification processes, which often simultaneously increase the surface resistant to wear, are based on heat treating such as laser hardening [6,7].To diminish wear in tribological systems it is not always necessary to provide the entire surface with a wear resistant layer. Depending on the application it is sufficient to harden locally the load carrying areas which are subjected to wear.…”