Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI) in the recent past has established itself as a versatile material for engineering applications with its wide range of tensile strength, yield strength ranging from 850 MPa to 1600 MPa and elongation ranging from 1 – 10 %. The wear performance of ADI is achieved through the special heat treating process on a commercially produced ductile iron with high Manganese (Mn) content which is a characteristic of the ductile iron produced in commercial Indian foundries. The present work shows the ability of ADI produced from commercial grade ductile iron with Mn content as high as 0.22 %, to be used as wear resistant material and the effect of austempering time and temperature on wear behavior of ADI is studied. Wear tests were performed on a pin on disc wear, friction monitoring machine at loads of 20 Newtons (N), 60 N and 80 N for a fixed interval of time (120 min). For better comparison, different grades of ADI are produced by austempered the samples at four different scales of temperatures 250oC, 300oC, 350oC and 400oC for different periods of time 30 minutes (min), 60 min, 90 min corresponding to each temperature respectively. In this paper, attempt has been made to correlate the wear properties of ADI with wear load and heat treatment conditions. Final part of the research work aims at studying the effect of austempering temperature and time on the wear characteristics of ADI. Wear loss (mg) decreases with increase in austempering time, because at the higher austempering time retained, austenite content is higher and as the temperature is increased, wear loss from the sample increases due to decrease in hardness. Wear loss (mg) at higher load (N) is more due to increase in normal reaction, thus friction.
