A comparative study on wear behaviors of hot work and cold work tool steel with same hardness under dry sliding tribological test

In the present study, two different commercial tool steels SKD-61 and SKD-11 were hardened to attain the similar hardness of 50 HRC (5.51 GPa) and nanoindentaion test was performed to obtain the nanomechanical properties of the hardened steels. Furthermore, wear behavior of these steels were investigated using tribo test with different combination of load and sliding velocity. FE-SEM along with EDS was used to examine the surface morphology of the hardened steels before and after the tribo test. Results showed similar wear behavior at low sliding velocity and low applied load for both the steels but with the increase in sliding velocity beyond 0.20 m/s, the specific wear rate of SKD-11 steel also increases. Whereas, wear of SKD-61 tool steel exhibited no sever changes. Microgroove with plastic deformation, micro cracks, adhesion and oxidation was observed as primary wear mechanism. It can be said that at high load and high sliding velocity, SKD-61exhibits better wear performance than SKD-11 tool steel.