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.

Systematic experimental observations concerning the response of microstructural features on fretting wear of steel grades were conducted. Five steel grades with different typical microstructural features were selected. The effect of various microstructures on fretting wear behaviour and the resulting wear mechanism were evaluated. Results show that microstructural features play a significant effect on fretting wear resistance depending on the applied loads. The DP and Q&P steel having low hardness show comparable or even better fretting wear resistance than the FM steel of the highest hardness regardless of loads, which are all better than TWIP and IF steel. The result suggests that the combination of soft ferrite and hard martensite with/without retained austenite having low hardness displays superior fretting wear resistance.