Development of Atmosphere-controlled Tribometer and Fail-safe Analysis

The design of existing tribometer mainly focuses on normal pressure and environmental conditions, and aims to measure the effect of load and speed on material performance. The effect of gas pressure and environmental condition on performance of materials is usually not considered. Thus, data from friction tests are not precise. In this paper, a new atmosphere tribometer is developed to study the tribological behavior of materials under severe rugged atmosphere. A fail-safe analysis is performed through reproducibility, comparability, and sensitivity tests. The tribometer allows tests to be performed in block-circle disc line contact, pin-circle disc line contact, and block-circle disc face contact configurations at controlled atmosphere and gas pressure. A self-centering plant is designed to settle the poor contact problem. A pin-on-disk test is conducted, and the test results indicate that the proposed design is efficient. A combined sealing style is introduced to control gas leaks. Compared with other sealing styles, the combined sealing is found to meet the experiment requirements best. And the reproducibility, comparability, and sensitivity tests validate the performance of the tribometer. The designed atmosphere tribometer reliably simulates the friction test under extremely harsh conditions, enhances the ability for material tribological properties test, and ensures accuracy of the tribological data.

Tribological Properties of Cylinder Block/Valve Plate Interface of Axial Piston Pump on the Tribometer

The tribological properties of cylinder block/valve plate is an important consideration in the design of axial piston pump.The effect of materials and heat treatment on friction and wear properties has been studied in depth.Engi-neering experiences show that the speed and load also affect the tribological properties,but these have not been systematically analyzed.The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the tribological properties of the commonly used materials(CuPb1 5Sn5 and 38CrMoAl/42CrMo)for cylinder block/valve plate with different heat treatment and con-tact pressure at different speed.During the test,tribometer is used to simulate the contact pattern between the valve plate/cylinder block in axial piston pump,the friction coefficient,wear rate and surface topography are analyzed to evaluate the tribological properties of different types of friction samples at different speed.Results indicate that:(1)contact surface of the samples at 1800 r/min is more prone to adhesive wear than those at 500 r/min;(2)in the terms of wear resistance,quench-tempered and nitrided 38CrMoAl(38CrMoAl QTN for short)is better than quench-tem-pered and nitrided 42CrMo,although they are all commonly used materials in the axial piston pump;(3)2.5 MPa is the critical contact pressure of the interface between valve plate made of 38CrMoAl QTN and cylinder block made of CuPb1 5Sn5 on the tribometer,which implies the pressure bearing area at the bottom of the cylinder block should be carefully designed;(4)the valve plate/cylinder block made of 38CrMoAl QTN/CuPb15Sn5 exhibits good tribological properties in a real axial piston pump.This research is useful for the failure analysis and structural optimization design of the valve plates/cylinder block.

Comprehensive review of tribometer dynamics-Cycle-based data analysis and visualization

Tribologists often rely on triboexperiments to investigate factors that affect a tribosystem.The inherent dynamic behavior of the respective tribometer setups and its effect on data interpretation remain often unknown.In this study,a comprehensive analysis of sensor data obtained from lubricated and dry triboexperiments is performed.Data are generated on a pin-on-disc test rig with a silicon nitride ball on a steel disc contact with a rotation frequency of~3 Hz.High-speed acquisition of sensor data up to 5 kHz is performed to resolve changes in the data within individual cycles.The characteristic frequencies of the system and their temporal evolution are determined via time--frequency analysis,which reveals periodic patterns in the sensor data.Cycle-based data evaluation allows the detection of localized events and changes during an operation and considerably reduces the apparent measurement uncertainty,as compared with an unreduced dataset.The data analysis and visualization routines presented herein may serve as a prototype for further application to tribometer setups.

On Implementing a Simulated Moment of Inertia in a Reduced Scale Brake Dynamometer

This paper describes the implementation of brake procedures with simulated inertia on a reduced scale brake dynamometer For this purpose, the theoretical foundations are first explained, and test measurements are carried out. The results show good agreement between calculated and measured accelerations during brake applications. Furthermore, braking processes with various driver models were carried out using associated normal force functions, and examined with regard to their coefficients of friction. A clear difference between these models can be observed. This introduces the possibility for new measurement methods for the analysis of NVH-behavior in brake systems. This work is the first step towards identifying a transfer function between full- and reduced-scale brake dynamometers. In a second step, the temperature scaling must be taken into account. Based on these results, it is possible to isolate the influences of the braking system components from those of the dynamics of the friction coefficient in the boundary layer.

On the experimental characterization of the fluid volume influence on the friction between rough surfaces

The load-bearing behaviour of lubricated contacts depends primarily on the normal force,the relative velocity,and the geometry.Thus,with the aid of the Stribeck curve,it is usually well possible to characterize whether hydrodynamics,mixed friction,or boundary friction is more likely to be present.The fact that the load regime can also depend on the fluid quantity is obvious,but has hardly been systematically investigated so far.Especially for contacts with microscopic roughness,the defined application of a very small amount of fluid is a very challenging requirement.In this paper,a very fundamental study shows how a pin-on-disc tribometer can be used to achieve the transition from dry friction via mixed friction to predominant hydrodynamics by the amount of supplied fluid.The experiments are carried out on samples filed with different coarseness.In addition,the simultaneous influence of partial filling and normal force as well as relative velocity is also shown.Very good reproducibility has been practically reached over the entire range of the tests.Regarding the quantities for the coefficient of friction(COF),it was concluded that close to full filling,a reduction of the fluid quantity has a similar effect on the COF as the reduction of the velocity.This property goes along with the common theory of starved lubricated systems.Such behaviour was not observed to the same extent for the normal force.In the vicinity of smaller fluid quantities,the COF increases very rapidly with further reduction in fluid quantity,far more disproportionately than that with reduction in velocity.With a deeper understanding of this problem,various practical issues such as idling or the run-up process in bearings can also be studied in a more focused manner.

Tribology in metal forming at elevated temperatures

The tribo-characteristics of metal forming at high temperatures have not yet been well understood due to the complex nature of thermal,microstructural,interaction,and process parameters.This is a review paper on the effects of temperature,coating,and lubrication to the tribological characteristics in hot forming as well as the tribometers for different metal forming processes at elevated temperatures mainly based on the experimental work.The tribological behaviors of oxides in hot forming,such as rolling and stamping,were reviewed and presented.Some commonly used surface coatings and lubricants in hot forming were given.Many types of tribometer were selected and presented and some of them provided a great potential to characterize friction and wear at elevated temperatures.Nevertheless,more testing conditions should be further investigated by developing new tribometers.Eventually,experimental results obtained from reliable tribometers could be used in theory and model developments for different forming processes and materials at high temperatures.The review also showed the great potential in further investigations and innovation in tribology.