Dry rolling/sliding wear of nanostructured pearlite

The dry rolling–sliding wear behaviour of pearlite that has an interlamellar spacing of just 85 nm has been characterised. Its wear resistance is found to be comparable to that of much harder bainitic steels. Microstructural observations indicate that there is substantial plastic deformation of both ferrite and cementite components of pearlite in the vicinity of the wear surface. Plasticity is not expected from Hertzian analysis that assumes a smooth contact surface. Instead, it is likely to be a consequence of exaggerated stresses due to surface roughness. The material remains ductile to shear strains in the order of 4. Diffraction data indicate that the coherent domain size is reduced to about half the interlamellar spacing and that some of the cementite may dissolve and contribute to the expansion of the lattice parameter of ferrite.