A quantitative analysis of the influence of carbides size distributions on wear behaviour of high-speed steel in dry rolling/sliding contact

The wear resistance of steels arises largely through the incorporation of a significant volume fraction of hard second-phase particles, usually carbides. While there is considerable understanding of the effect of chemical composition on carbide fraction and size distribution, the understanding of the effect of carbide size distribution on wear resistance, for constant composition, is poor. In the current work, wear tests on high-speed steels of the same chemical composition but different carbide distributions induced by different manufacturing routes are considered. For the investigated range of carbide size distributions wear rates can differ by 40%, indicating that the manufacturing route of the steel plays a major roll on its wear performance. We demonstrate that cumulative frequency plots of carbide sizes can be used to quantitatively predict changes in wear rate for materials of constant chemical composition but different carbide distributions, provided the critical thickness of the wear debris is measured.