Effect of Inter Critical Annealing on Microstructure and Wear Behaviour of En-8 Steel

The objective of the present work is to study effect of microstructure on abrasive wear resistance of EN-8 steel which were given inter-critical annealing heat treatment. The samples were heat treated to produce dual phased structure of hard martensite islands embedded in soft ferrite matrix. The results of the indicated that abrasive wear loss increased with decrease in hardness as well as increase in grain size of initial microstructure. The wear loss also increased with applied load. The phase analysis of wear debris revealed the presence of Fe2O3 indicating a tendency towards oxidative mechanism. The variation in wear loss with sliding length and applied load was correlated with microstructure of the material and distribution of phases.