Abstract
The microstructure of the materials constituting a metallic frictional contact strongly influences tribological performance. Being able to tailor friction and wear is challenging due to the complex microstructure evolution associated with tribological loading. Here, we investigate the effect of the strain distribution on these processes. High-purity copper plates were morphologically surface textured with two parallel rectangles—referred to as membranes—over the entire sample length by micro-milling. By keeping the width of these membranes constant and only varying their height, reciprocating tribological loading against sapphire discs resulted in different elastic and plastic strains. Finite element simulations were carried out to evaluate the strain distribution in the membranes. It was found that the maximum elastic strain increases with decreasing membrane stiffness. The coefficient of friction decreases with increasing membrane aspect ratio. By analyzing the microstructure and local crystallographic orientation, we found that both show less change with decreasing membrane stiffness.Graphic abstract
Highlights
Correlating the microstructure of a material with its properties is one of the most central questions in materials science and engineering
While the disc is moving to the right, the highest shear stresses occur at the left edge of the membrane; the stress decreases along the width
The geometrically necessary dislocations (GND) density decreases with membrane aspect ratio, from ρGND = 6 × 1015 m−2 for Ar = 0.4 to ρGND = 2 × 1014 m−2 for Ar = 1.8. This suggests a decrease in plastic deformation with increasing membrane aspect ratio, which is consistent with the results presented above and the idea that as the aspect ratio increases, the decrease in bending stiffness leads to more elastic deformation
Summary
Correlating the microstructure of a material with its properties is one of the most central questions in materials science and engineering. Tribology is defined as the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion [1]. The coefficient of friction of a tribological system can be calculated by the ratio of the shear stress and the yield pressure of the softer material [7, 8]. This result demonstrates the relation between tribological behavior and material properties and the materials’ microstructure [9]
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