Wear and Friction Mechanism of Stainless Steel 420 Under Various Lubrication Conditions: A Tribological Assessment With Ball on Flat Test

The application of stainless steel 420 is noted in various industrial sectors such as aerospace, automobile etc. However, the wear mechanism of stainless steel 420 is greatly affected by the use of 100Cr6 balls due to the adhesion and abrasion mechanism generated between the contact surfaces. In this work, the ball-on-flat experiments were performed on stainless steel-420 versus 100cr6 friction pairs under dry, minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) and pool conditions. Then, the wear studies in terms of volume loss, profile tracks, micrographs, coefficient of friction, etc. were performed. The results demonstrated that the MQL and pool conditions help to improve the tribological properties of stainless steel 420 alloy against 100Cr6 ball.