Soft novel form of white-etching matter and ductile failure of carbide-free bainitic steels under rolling contact stresses

There has been a great deal of work on the formation of hard whiteetching
regions in conventional bearing steels such as 1C-1.5Cr wt% when
subjected repeatedly to rolling contact stresses. The regions are a consequence
of localised mechanical attrition across microcrack faces and mixing,
which refine the local structure and force cementite to dissolve. This whiteetching
matter is often associated with brittle phenomena because the hardness
can exceed 1100 HV. In contrast, carbide-free mixtures of bainitic ferrite
and retained austenite when subjected to the same loading have been unexpectedly and white-etching layer grinding of rails.
found not to develop the characteristic patches of hard material and
to show instead signs of ductility in the attrited regions. The work presented
here shows that the white-etching areas that develop in carbide-free bainite
are softer than their surroundings, whether they are in hard nanostructured
bainite destined for bearing applications or when the steel is designed for the
manufacture of rails. Advanced characterisation tools were used for the first
time to understand carbon redistribution during its formation. The deep interest
about soft white-etching matter originates from the idea that it could
lead to the reduction in premature failure of wind turbine gearbox bearings