Accelerated wear testing of PTFE composite bearing materials

Abstract

Hertzian line contact stresses between a rotating metal cylinder and a reciprocating flat strip of the bearing material are used in an accelerated wear test described in this paper. The test readily demonstrates differences in the wear behaviour between different PTFE-based dry bearing materials. For one widely-used woven PTFE fibre composite, the relationships between wear and stress, temperature, counterface roughness and fluid contamination were shown to be similar to those found in long-term bearing tests