Micro-abrasion resistance of thermochemically treated steels in aqueous solutions : mechanisms, maps, materials selection

• Autor(a) principal: Mathew, M. T.
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Stack, M. M., Matijevic, B., Rocha, L. A., Ariza, E.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/7787
• topic: Thermochemical treatment; Tenifer; Vanadizing; Maps; Micro-abrasion; Mechanisms; Science & Technology

The area of micro-abrasion is an interesting and relatively recent area in tribo-testing methodologies, where small particles of less than 10 mm are employed between interacting surfaces. It is topical for a number of reasons; its direct relation to the mechanisms of the wear process in bio-tribological applications, ease in conducting tests and the good repeatability of the test results. It has widespread applications in conditions used in the space and offshore industries to bio-engineering for artificial joints and implants. There have been many recent studies on the micro-abrasion performance of materials, ranging from work basic metals to nanostructured coatings. However, no significant work is reported on the micro-abrasion resistance of thermochemically treated steels. Hence, this paper looks at the performance of two thermochemically treated steels, Tenifer bath nitride stainless steel (T-SS) and vanadized carbon steel (V-CS) in such conditions with reference to the stainless steel (SS) by varying the applied load and sliding distance. The results indicated that T-SS demonstrates exceptionally poor resistance to micro-abrasion. It was observed that the heat treatment process and properties of the hardened layer (hardness and thickness) are extremely important in determining the micro-abrasion resistance of such steels. Finally, the results were used to develop micro-abrasion mechanism and wastage maps, which can be used to optimize the surface treated materials for micro-abrasion resistance.