An abrasive wear test for thin and small-sized steel blade specimens

Abstract

An abrasive wear tester was obtained by equipping a polishing machine with a specimen holding system. The test results for SKD11 and SCM440 steels were consistent with the standard pin on disk test. The main objective of developing this tester was to use it on thin and small-sized specimens. Thermal glue was applied to fix these wear test specimens, instead of using nuts or screws, or embedding them into epoxy resin. Influences of the factors specimen size, test time, load, speed, and environment (dry and wet conditions) on wear in the test were studied with both high speed steel (HSS) and high carbon (High C) steel blades. The results show that larger specimens of both materials had less wear, because at a constant loading force the pressure decreased with area of the specimen. Wear increased with testing time, load, and speed, as expected. In addition, wet conditions gave more wear than dry conditions. The HSS blades with 63 HRC hardness had better wear resistance than the high C steel with 43 HRC hardness. The developed test could distinguish between the wear properties of HSS and high C steel blades for thin and small-sized specimens, for which the ASTM standard wear test cannot be applied.