Abstract

Rubbers are widely used in various fields as the important sealing materials, such as window seal, door seal, valve, pump seal, etc. The fretting wear behavior of rubbers has an important effect on their sealing performance. This paper presents an experimental study on the fretting wear behavior of rubbers against the steel ball under air conditions (room temperature at 20 ± 2 °C and humidity at 40%). Three kinds of rubbers, including EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer), FPM (fluororubber), and NBR (nitrile–butadiene rubber), are considered in experiments. The sphere-on-flat contact pattern is used as the contact model. The influences of the displacement amplitude, normal force, frequency, and rubber hardness on the fretting wear behavior are discussed in detail. White light profiler and scanning electron microscope (SEM) are used to analyze the wear mechanism of the rubber surface. The fretting wear performances of three rubbers are compared by considering the effect of the displacement amplitude, normal force, frequency, and rubber hardness. The results show that NBR has the most stable friction coefficient and the best wear resistance among the three rubbers.

Highlights

  • White light profiler and scanning electron microscope (SEM) are used to analyze the wear mechanism of the rubber surface

  • When they work in a vibrational environment, the fretting wear will occur at the contact surfaces of rubbers, which reduces the sealing performance and reliability of rubber materials

  • The elliptic curve is caused by the elastic hysteresis and plastic deformation of the rubber surface

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Summary

Introduction

White light profiler and scanning electron microscope (SEM) are used to analyze the wear mechanism of the rubber surface. Rubber is a kind of soft material widely used in daily life, aerospace, construction machinery, transportation, and other fields [1,2,3], such as soft crawling robots, mechanical seal gaskets, car windows, etc. It possesses high structural flexibility, good environmental adaptability, strong affinity, and low price, and has very broad applications. Systematically studied the friction and wear characteristics of rubber coatings with the effect of normal force, velocity, displacement amplitude, temperature, and surface roughness. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

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