Three-body abrasive wear of fine pearlite, nanostructured bainite and martensite

•Three-body abrasive wear of three different microstructures was studied.•Limited variation in wear loss observed in spite of large differences in hardness.•The mechanism of material removal from surface changes with microstructure.•Significant strain-hardening of bainite observed near the wear surface.•Pearlite and martensite showed significant softening near the abraded surface.

The abrasive wear of three metallurgical structures with radically different hardnesses has been investigated for the same steel. The particular steel concerned is a recent innovation capable of generating extremely fine distributions of crystals. The austenite in the alloy nevertheless has the capability of uniformly transforming into extremely fine pearlite, nanostructured bainite, and plate martensite. It is found that although the abrasion rates and wear coefficients are not very different for the three states, the mechanisms of abrasion are quite different. We report detailed characterisation experiments together with comparisons with commercially available steels subjected to identical tests.