Comparison of three-body impact abrasive wear behaviors for quenching–partitioning–tempering and quenching–tempering 20Si2Ni3 steels

• Ploughing‐cutting, abrasive-embedded and strain fatigue are wear characteristics.
• Wear mass losses show a trend of rise-fall with the increasing impact energy.
• Q–P–T steels have less mass losses during three-body impact abrasive wear tests.
• Q–P–T steels show high work hardening and phase transformation strengthening.
• Q–P–T process is effective on improving wear resistance performance of steels.

Three-body impact abrasive wear behaviors of 20Si2Ni3 steels treated by Quenching–Partitioning–Tempering (Q–P–T) and quenching–tempering (Q–T) processes were investigated under four impact energies from 0.5 J to 3.5 J. The results indicated that wear mass losses increased and then decreased with the increasing impact energy and the peak value occurred under 2.5 J. The Q–P–T steel owned less wear mass loss than the Q–T steel. The wear characteristics of two steels were mainly shown as ploughing‐cutting wear, abrasive-embedded wear and strain fatigue wear. The Q–P–T sample suffered heavier ploughing‐cutting wear than the Q–T sample under a low impact energy, and underwent more strain fatigue wears under a high impact energy. During the wear tests, several hundred microns of hardened layers were formed and their corresponding thicknesses increased with the increasing impact energy. The Q–P–T steel obtained thicker hardened layer because of its high phase transformation strengthening and work hardening during the wears. As a result, the wear resistance of the Q–P–T steel was enhanced effectively, and thereby the excellent impact abrasive wear performance was achieved.