Analysis of Wear Particles Formed in Boundary-Lubricated Sliding Contacts

Aydar Akchurin,Rob Bosman,Piet M Lugt,Mark Van Drogen

doi:10.1007/s11249-016-0701-z

Aydar Akchurin, Rob Bosman + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-016-0701-z

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Abstract

The wear process in a sliding contact results in generation of wear debris, which affects the system life. The impact depends on the wear particle properties, such as size, shape and number. In this paper, the wear particles formed during a cylinder-on-disk wear test were examined. PAO additive-free oil, steel–brass and steel–steel contact pairs were employed. A particle isolation procedure was applied, and SEM/EDS analysis was used to validate it. DLS measurements indicated the wear particles radius to be in the range from 230 to 260 nm for both materials under applied nominal pressures from 87 to 175 MPa. AFM data revealed the wear particles size to be in the range from 133 to 175 nm. A slight increase in particles size with load was observed by AFM for both materials and confirmed by DLS for steel samples. AFM measurements were taken to determine thickness, length and width distributions of the wear particles. The number of wear particles per sliding distance and per unit load was estimated to be in the range from 150 to 750particlesmmN for steel and approximately 1600–1900 particlesmmN for brass.

Highlights

The wear process results in generation of debris, or particles, of various sizes, shapes, color distributions and chemical compositions [1,2,3]
The procedure can be applied for the preparation of samples for dynamic light scattering (DLS), scanning electron microscope (SEM)/EDS and atomic force microscope (AFM)
Based on DLS measurements, it was shown that the radius of particles is in the range of 230–360 nm for both materials

Summary

Introduction

The wear process results in generation of debris, or particles, of various sizes, shapes, color distributions and chemical compositions [1,2,3]. Wear particles produce mechanical damage, sometimes accompanying effects become even more important. The severity of the reaction is known to be dependent on the wear particles number, size, shape, surface area [6, 7]. The thickener structure can be destroyed by the particles leading to the failure of lubrication and of the bearing [11]. It is believed that the wear debris reflects the wear mechanism [14,15,16], and significant efforts were devoted to wear particles analysis

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