Effect of Intercritical Heat Treatment on the Abrasive Wear Behaviour of Plain Carbon Dual Phase Steel

Dual phase (DP) steels have been prepared from low carbon steel (0.14% C) at intercritical temperature 740 degrees C and time is varied from 1 minute to 30 minutes followed by water quenching. These steels have been characterized by optical microscopy, FE-SEM, hardness measurements, tensile properties and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) studies. Tensile properties of a typical dual phase steel are found to be 805 MPa ultimate tensile strength with 18% total elongation. Martensite volume fraction of D P steel (determined by EBSD technique) prepared at 740 degrees C for 6 minutes is found to be 10.2% and the grain size of ferrite and martensite found to be 14.39 micron and 1.05 microns respectively. Abrasive wear resistance of dual phase steels has been determined by pin on drum wear testing machine. DP steels have been found to be 25% more wear resistant than that of normalized steel. Short intercritical heating time followed by water quenching gives higher wear resistance by virtue of smaller and well dispersed martensite island in the matrix of ferrite.