Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Simulative Friction
and Wear Testing
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Defining the Problem
14.3 Selecting a Scale of Simulation
Levels of Tribosimulation
14.4 Defining Field-Compatible Metrics
14.5 Selecting or Constructing the Test Apparatus
14.6 Conducting Baseline Testing Using Established
Metrics and Refining Metrics as Needed
14.7 Case Studies
An Oil Pump Gear Set with Several Wear Modes • Wear of
Gravure Rollers on Doctor Blades • Scoring of Spur Gears •
Peter J. Blau Wear of Plastic Parts in an Optical Disk Drive • Wear of
Tribomaterials Investigative Rotary Slitter Knife Blades • Erosive Wear of Piping
Systems 14.8 Conclusions
14.1 Introduction
The selection of lubricants, materials, or surface treatments for friction and wear-critical applications
often involves validation or screening tests before final decisions are made. Testing is particularly valuable
during the development of new machines for which operating conditions are much different than existing
designs. An example of the latter might be a new design that cannot use off-the-shelf bearings or gears
because the temperatures are too high or the surrounding environments are too corrosive. The steps
involved in developing tribosimulations of current or newly designed systems are, with only one signif-
icant exception, essentially the same. The exception is that for an existing friction of wear problem, there
is prior experience in the response of the materials and lubricants to the operating conditions. In a new
design, however, there may be no direct prior experience in the behavior of candidate materials, although
there may be some relevant experience from machinery of a similar kind.
There are two types of tribosimulations: computer simulations and physical simulations. The computer
simulation uses a virtual mechanical assembly that consists of several components defined in terms of a
set of properties, spatial relationships, and assumed rules of interaction. Known or estimated properties
of the materials and/or lubricants are provided to the model, and the expected responses of the virtual
tribosystem to such variables as load cycles, deflections, temperature excursions, etc., are calculated. Such
programs have been prepared by both academic researchers and industry engineers for tribological
components like bearings, face seals, brakes, and gears. Component designers have also developed sophis-
ticated design tools for automotive valve trains, engines, and pumping systems as well.
The second type of tribosimulation is the physical simulation. Here, materials and lubricants are
screened in an apparatus that is intended to provide the essential operating characteristics of the intended
Tribosystem — open Is the system open to the environment, like the teeth of earthmoving equipment, or closed, like a
or closed? sealed recirculation system?
Macro contact and To what degree do the shapes of the contacting bodies conform to one another? How can the
conformity geometry be described: convex curve-on-convex curve, flat-on-flat, particles-on-flat, etc.? Is the
contact open on the edges or closed so as to confine wear debris?
Microcontact and Surface texture of the interacting bodies — roughness, waviness, and lay. How long does the initial
surface finish finish persist in service?
Type of relative Is the motion unidirectional, reciprocating, intermittent, or continuous? What is the characteristic
motion constant distance (stroke length, etc.)? Fretting or long-distance sliding?
Speed of relative Sliding velocity or impingement velocity, if particles are involved.
motion
Contact load and How is the load distributed on the surfaces? What is the magnitude of the normal force? How does
pressure it vary?
Temperature Does the temperature change during operation or remain constant? Is frictional heating an issue?
Contact environment What chemical environment does the contact area experience? Is there a lubricant? What lubricant
and lubrication regime is present (dry, starved, boundary, mixed, hydrodynamic)? What are the lubricant
characteristics? Are there contaminants in the lubricant? Is the lubricant agitated so as to entrain
air? Are there vibrations or other mechanical contributions to negative performance?
Third bodies Are there particles involved in the wear, and if so, what are their characteristics? Are particles
generated by wear or externally to the contact area?
Type(s) of wear Using surface analysis and microscopy, what is/are the dominant form(s) of wear?
Performance To solve the problem, the negative manner in which wear or friction affect the operation must be
degradation defined.
Experience What are the current materials and lubricants, and which others have been tried?
Metrics What quantitative measures are used to described the wear or friction of the subject component?
In existing applications, identifying the type of wear involves examining field-worn parts which have
been protected from the environment after having been removed from the machine. Surfaces of worn
parts which have stood unprotected for some time may be corroded and difficult to analyze. Other
complications include removing surface deposits of degraded or heat-altered lubricants without destroy-
ing the most telling clues as to the dominant mode of wear damage. In new designs, the engineer is
placed in a position of speculating what the environment of the tribosystem will be, and adjusting the
simulation appropriately. Some guidance can, however, be obtained by analyzing existing systems with
similar mechanical, thermal, and chemical aspects in the key areas of tribocontact.
TriboSystem Analysis (TSA) [3] is a means to define the operating conditions of a system to be
simulated. It involves a systematic analysis, aspect-by-aspect, of the operating environment of the subject
component(s). Table 14.1 lists key elements for analyzing a tribosystem. Often, not all of the operating
parameters are known. Therefore it is doubly important to understand the characteristic wear features
or other key aspects of the tribosystem that will help to define metrics for the simulation (see Section 14.4).
Understanding the properties and behavior of the currently used materials, or those used in an
application which has key operating aspects in common with the component of interest, is important.
Knowing what materials have and have not worked in the given application is equally valuable because
it could save a great deal of time and effort. Simply asking the questions embodied in a thorough
tribosystem analysis can go a long way toward solving the problem. Verifying the answers to those
questions with a second opinion or a measurement can also be helpful. Sometimes people incorrectly
assume that certain operating conditions exist.
Tribosimulations sometimes need to be sensitive enough to distinguish between different variants of
the same material. For example, there are many ways to heat-treat steels. A wear problem may occur if
a component supplier changes the heat treatment, perhaps for reasons of economy, or changes the
material supplier without notifying the customer (see the later example of gear scoring). The simulation
in that case must be sensitive enough to detect the differences due to different heat treatments. Detecting
Level 2 tribosimulations use subassemblies which are subjected to near-operating conditions. Examples
include brake pads and rotor combinations on dynamometers, fluid pumps in closed-loop pump test
rigs, and jet engines in engine test cells. Nearly as expensive as Level 1 tests, Level 2 tests offer additional
control of the externally applied test parameters. At the same time, fewer of the field-associated effects
on performance are faithfully simulated. For example, the effects of road-induced vibrations on piston
motions, the vehicle-specific flow of air past brake components, and the introduction of environmental
contaminants into wheel bearing grease may be omitted in subassembly tests. In dynamometer tests of
break component materials it is common to apply a series of test stages in an attempt to simulate specific
types of frictional phenomena, like fade effects at elevated temperatures. Even staged Level 2 tests as
complex as these cannot totally simulate the full range of habits of individual drivers and driving
conditions. In some cases, however, Level 2 tribosimulations can be very effective in screening materials
or lubricants because the operating conditions of the system are more clearly known. For example, loop-
by-loop ballpoint pen testers can show how long the products will continue to write effectively and
establish failure statistics for the entire pen, whose satisfactory performance depends on the ability of
the point to deliver a clear, uniform line of writing fluid to the paper.
One tribosimulation area of particular medical interest is that of computerized hip and knee joint
testing. Attention here is given to mimicking the forces, types of motion, and impact loads to which bio-
implants are subjected. This subject area can make effective use of both physical and virtual component
Level 2 simulations. The selection of the fluids to simulate synovial fluid and to correlate with clinical
results is an important issue. Material swelling in situ, in the case of polymeric materials, and the role
of debris particles as they interact with the soft tissues surrounding the joints, are also of interest.
Level 3 tribosimulations involve test rigs designed to test specific components, like bearings and gears.
For example, bearing test rigs have been successful in developing empirical design and selection guidelines
for rolling element bearings of many kinds. Multiple-station rigs, automated to take data or to ascertain
critical failure conditions, like excessive heat or vibration, can be run unattended, enabling the compi-
lation of lifetime statistics and related performance data for consumer products or machine components.
Level 4 tribosimulations involve test coupons of simple shapes. Examples include pin-on-disk tests,
block-on-ring tests, four-ball lubricant tests, dry-sand-rubber-wheel abrasion tests, and vibratory cavi-
tation tests. These tests are described elsewhere in this volume and in the wear testing literature [e.g.,
ASM (1992, 1997)]. Their usefulness is based on their ability to simulate the key contact conditions of
the components of interest. For example, a cam roller follower in the engine of a certain diesel engine
might be simulated by two disks turning at different speeds to impart a desired degree of slip to the
Field component High friction Seizure; galling or scuffing marks; power draw of a motor; overheating of
bearings or slideways; irregular motions; excessive wear of bearing or
sealing surfaces; unusual noises or vibrations; marring of a formed
product’s surface, as in metalworking; irregular speed fluctuations in a
bearing
Surface damage Scuffing marks; galling and other visual indications
Wear Fluid leakage in a seal; loss of compression in a piston; erosive perforation
of a pipe elbow; presence of wear particles in a lubricant; loss of fit
between parts; excessive or unusual noise from gears or bearings;
excessive or unusual vibrations; changes in the appearance of contact
surfaces (abrasive grooves, scuff marks, etc.); signal drop-out in electrical
contacts; loss of cutting performance of a tooling insert.
Laboratory specimen High friction Friction force or torque measurements
Surface damage Visual inspection or profilometric measurements
Wear Weight loss; displacement relative to another specimen or reference plane,
wear scar size; wear depth; wear volume calculated by surface
measurements or by weight change; visual examination; changes in
friction force, surface temperature, or vibrations as detected by sensors;
surface reflection characteristics measured by sensors
contact. Furthermore, the test disks could be supplied with a lubricant and heated to simulate engine
conditions.
The linkage between tribosimulation levels can be important to establish the validation of Level 3 and
4 tests as effective screening methods. For example, if a set of Level 4 rankings agrees with relative rankings
of the same set of materials or lubricants in Level 3 tests, and the validity of Level 3 tests in a certain
application has been confirmed, then the usefulness of Level 4 tests will be greatly extended.
and then a composite rating for each couple was determined (the sum of the two specimen ratings).
Each test was duplicated to establish the repeatability of the results, and to enhance the investigators’
confidence in the differences between the wear ratings of different material couples. Figure 14.4 compares
the wear seen on an actual part with that produced in laboratory experiments of several candidate alloys.
Results from these two kinds of simulative tests, coupled with full-scale pump rig tests at a manufac-
turer’s facility, cost modeling, and alloy processing trials, were used to select the leading alloy and surface
treatment for this application.
Light abrasion 1.0 Faint, widely spaced grooves aligned parallel to the sliding direction. Grooves may not be
continuous around the track and are similar in depth to the original grinding marks.
Moderate 4.0 Multiple, parallel wear grooves extending across a substantial portion of the contact area.
abrasion Some of the original surface finish visible between the abrasion grooves.
Severe abrasion 6.0 Deep abrasive wear grooves across the entire contact face. Little or no trace of the original
surface finish.
Light scuffing 1.5 Polished-looking areas with little or no original surface finish within their boundaries.
Scuffed area < 25% of the nominal contact area.
Moderate scuffing 3.0 Scuffed area 25 to 75% of the nominal contact area.
Scoring 5.0 Localized, relatively deep grooves ( depth of original machining marks), suggesting
plowing by large hard particles.
Pull-out 5.0 Removal of particles or entire grains from the surface. Regions of pull-out may be associated
with scoring by the removal material.
Delamination 5.0 Detachment of thin, flat platelets; typically associated with fatigue crack growth parallel to
the free surface.
Burning 5.0 Production of dark oxides or tarnishes suggestive of exposure to excessive frictional heating.
Severe metallic 6.0 Significant plastic deformation accompanied by deep grooving. No traces of the original
wear surface finish. Often accompanied by shiny flake-like wear particles.
Microwelding 1.0 Presence of tiny flecks of highly adherent, transferred material from the opposing surface.
Major transfer 2.0 Presence of relatively large particles or patches of highly adherent material from the
opposing surface.
excess coating material, and were experiencing unacceptable wear as a result. It was decided to try ion-
implanting the surfaces of the rollers to improve their wear. ASTM standards G-99 (pin-on-disk test)
was used to compare the implanted and unimplanted (current) materials. While the wear of the roller
material was markedly improved, the wear of the doctor blade material increased to an unacceptable
level. Therefore, it was decided that ion implantation would not be an acceptable solution in this case.
While the pin-on-disk method was not an exact simulation of the doctor blade operating conditions,
it was felt to be adequate to evaluate one potential solution for this wear problem, and to determine that
alternative methods of surface engineering or materials substitution would be required.
14.8 Conclusions
The development of simulative friction and wear tests requires an interdisciplinary approach, beginning
with a tribosystem analysis to define the problem and to establish key metrics that can be used to test
the validity of simulations. Laboratory simulations using either custom-designed apparatus or standard
test methods can be successfully applied to save time and money in solving friction and wear problems.
No single test method will solve all problems, and proper test selection is critical for success. Sometimes,
more than one test method will be needed to establish an engineering solution; especially, if more than
one form of wear or surface damage is present in the application of interest.
References
ASM Handbook (1992), Friction Lubrication and Wear Technology, 18, ASM International Materials Park,
OH.
ASM (1997), Source Book on Friction and Wear Testing, ASM International, Materials Park, OH.
Blau, P.J. (1998), Development of bench-scale test methods for screening P/M aluminum alloys for wear
resistance, in Powder Metallurgy Aluminum and Light Alloys for Automotive Applications, Jandeska,
Jr., W.F. and Chernenkoff, R.A. (Eds.), Metal Powder Industries Federation, Princeton, NJ, 97.
Blau, P.J. and Budinski, K.G. (1999), Use of ASTM standard wear tests for solving practical industrial
wear problems, Wear, 225-229, 1159.