Stainless steels are characterized as having relatively poor wear resistance and tribological properties, but they are often required for a particular application because of their corrosion resistance. This article describes the classification of stainless steels and wear. Stainless steels have been classified by microstructure and are categorized as austenitic, martensitic, ferritic, or duplex. The main categories of wear are related to abrasion, erosion, adhesive wear, and surface fatigue. The article presents a list that proposes the alloy family that could be the optimal selection for a particular wear mode. The corrosion modes include dry sliding, tribocorrosion, erosion, erosion-corrosion, cavitation, dry erosion, erosion-oxidation, galling and fretting.

This article provides a broad overview of sliding and adhesive wear, its processes, and its control, with special attention to three general classes of materials: metals, ceramics, and polymers. It discusses the ways in which materials can be damaged and removed during sliding contact. The article explains the physical and chemical nature of sliding surfaces. It presents wear equations, design criteria, and criteria for selection of materials. The article also describes the factors that affect wear performance of hybrid sliding systems. It concludes by providing general guidelines to prevent the sliding and adhesive wear in metals, polymers, and ceramics.

This article focuses on the tribological behavior of group 1, 2, and 3 cobalt-base alloys, namely, carbide-type wear-resistant alloys and laves-type wear-resistant alloys. The behavior includes hardness, yield strength and ductility, and fracture toughness. The article contains a table that lists the nominal compositions and typical applications of cobalt-base alloys. It discusses the properties and relative performance of specific alloys when subjected to the more common types of wear. These include abrasive wear, high-temperature sliding wear, rolling-contact fatigue wear, and erosive wear.

Wear is mechanically-induced surface damage that results in the progressive removal of material. Because different types of wear occur in machinery, many different types of wear tests have been developed to evaluate its effects on materials and surface treatments. This article provides an explanation on mechanisms, forms (sliding, impact, and rolling) and the causes of wear. It describes the wear measuring methods, including the mass loss method, wear width method, and scar depth method. The units used to report wear vary with type of wear and with the purpose for which the data are to be used. Listing the considerations of tribosystem analysis, the article provides information on selection of ASTM wear test methods grouped by wear type. The article concludes by tabulating the testing geometries and parameters that are commonly controlled and reported when conducting wear tests.