Study on Wear Properties of J11 Wheel Steel with Nonuniform Microstructure

In actual wheel–rail systems, a nonuniform microstructure of the wheel and rail materials is a serious problem. A double-disk rolling wear test device was used to study the influence of the nonuniform microstructure on the wear properties of wheel materials in the present study. The results show that the microstructure of the sample 1 includes proeutectoid ferrite, pearlite, and upper bainite, which is a nonuniform microstructure. By contrast, the microstructure of sample 2 contains only proeutectoid ferrite and pearlite. During wear tests, with the increasing number of test cycles, the weight loss of the sample 1 is consistently larger than that of the sample 2. A similar trend is observed with respect to deformation of the plastic layer. For the sample 1, fatigue cracks mainly propagate along the interface between the upper bainite and pearlite, leading to rapid wear failure; the main wear mechanism changes from spalling to fatigue with the increasing number of cycles. For the sample 2, the main wear mechanism changes from adhesive wear to fatigue wear with increasing number of cycles.