Influence of tempering temperature on the fretting wear of low alloyed martensitic construction steel

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the fretting wear behavior of low alloyed construction steel in the tempered fully martensitic state. The resulting damage mechanism and the resistance to fretting wear of martensitic steels subjected to different tempering temperature was evaluated and compared with the virgin (un-tempered) martensitic steel under the different loading conditions. The results show that the friction coefficient increases with the increase of the tempering temperature for all the applied loads. The fretting wear resistance mainly depends on the tempering temperature. Compared to the virgin (un-tempered) full martensite, most of the tempered martensites have better fretting wear resistance, in which the tempered martensitic (TM) steel of 200° due to a good balance of strength and ductility has a super fretting wear resistance for all loading conditions. In addition, the correlation of fretting wear resistance with the initial hardness was discussed.