On the impacts of grain refinement and strain-induced deformation on three-body abrasive wear responses of 18Cr–8Ni austenitic stainless steel

Abstract The concept of phase reversion annealing involving cold deformation of metastable austenite to strain-induced martensite, followed by annealing was adopted to obtain fine grained 18Cr–8Ni austenitic stainless steel. The primary objective of the present study was to elucidate the wear performance of fine-grained austenitic stainless steel through three-body abrasive wear tests at room and high temperatures and compare with the coarse-grained counterpart. The quartzite stones (quartz content over 90 wt%) with diameter 5–15 mm and hardness of 1100HV were used as the abrasive in three-body abrasive wear tests. The study demonstrated that the microstructure consisting of near defect-free and equiaxed fine austenite grains with high yield strength and elongation exhibited superior wear resistance at high temperature (250 °C), which is attributed twinning induced plasticity deformation in fine austenite grains. The wear mechanism varied as a function of distance from the center of the steel sample and was characterized by microploughing and microcutting.