I'm not exactly sure what of steel wire you want to investigate and what you exactl mean by wear. Maybe you should specify.
E.g. for high strength structural steel which is used to produce strands and locked cables severeal machanical parameters are usualy asssessed in the course of QA and System Quaification. First of all this is the ultimate tensile strength with verification of a minimm elongation and constriction at break in order to assure ductile behavior. Than fatigie strength at different medium load levels with subsequent tensile test. Also relaxation may be important. Another parameter which might be associated with wear resistance is the deflected tensile test.
A good starting point for might be the fib bulletin 89 (esp. table 5-2) This guideline presents also tests for final products in order to check chemical resistance or e.g. a salt fog test.