A Comparative Study on the Friction and Wear Properties of Three Different Copper Alloys

Abstract

A comparative study on the friction and wear properties of three kinds of copper alloys, including Cu-Ni based, Cu-Al and Cu-Be alloys was carried out in this study. The friction pair was stainless steel, and both dry and MoS2 lubrication friction experiments were investigated. During the experiments, different loads were chosen for different alloys. It was found that under dry friction condition, the friction coefficients of both Cu-Ni based and Cu-Al alloys did not change as the loads changes, whereas the friction coefficient of Cu-Be alloy increased as the loads increases. Under lubrication friction condition, the friction coefficients of all three alloys did not change as the load changes. The results show that the dry friction coefficient of Cu-Ni based alloy was the largest (0.74), the Cu-Al alloy next (0.60), and the Cu-Be alloy had the smallest dry friction coefficient (0.54). The lubrication friction coefficient of Cu-Ni based and Cu-Be was equal and relatively smaller (0.12), whereas the Cu-Al alloy had a relative larger lubrication friction coefficient (0.27). The microstructure observations were consistent with the friction and wear performance, and the SEM results show that different wear mechanisms were dominated for different alloys.