A recent paper published by mineAlloy researchers examines the scratch resistance of a series of candidate ground-engaging steels, with different microstructures: tempered martensite, nano-bainite, pearlite, and austenite. The researchers created wear grooves using tungsten carbide and diamond sliders and determined the material loss. A simple analytical wear model was developed to enable the comparison between candidate materials for differing scratching conditions. The results revealed that the role of hardness dominates over that of ductility for high loads and smaller abrasive tip radii. This observation leads to a number of striking changes in the relative wear rates of the candidate materials, which are effectively captured in the wear map proposed by the authors. The groove geometry due to the plastic flow of the material was also found to be the key parameter of the wear model and for the prediction of the wear mechanism.
The full paper is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wear.2018.03.017