Case Hardened steel with case depth showing a layer of high percentage of retained austenite
Wear Testing
Engineers are comfortable when they deal with numbers. To put a number on a certain material attribute, such as tensile strength, yield strength, impact energy, or hardness not only lends credibility to the attribute, many times it can be used in calculations and formulations. And so it is no different when it comes to wear properties. While the literature abounds with all types of wear tests, few if any, give us real hard numbers to use in calculations and formulae. Most of the time the established tests give us relative numbers which impart some ranking to the materials in question. Since wear is a weight loss phenomenon, these tests generally are reported as weight losses or volume losses.
At ATRONA we have performed various wear tests, from simple abrasion to sliding wear. This is especially useful when one tries to compare more than one sample. The specimens are extracted (all the same size), fixtured, and tested. Testing is typically performed in increments of say 100 to 500 cycles. Specimens are then weighed or measured where “numbers” can be obtained and then plotted to study the behavior of the surface against abrasion, wear, sliding components, etc.
Call us to see what we can do to help you “quantify” your wear characteristics for the material and/or heat treat you’re embarking on.
