The effect of steel disc surface texture in contact with ceramic ball on friction and wear in dry fretting

Abstract

Ceramics are used in a wide range of applications including bearings. Ceramic - metal contacts are of great potential for the future. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of a surface topography of a steel disc in contact with ceramic ball on friction and wear under dry gross fretting regime. Experiments were carried out using an Optimol SRV5 tribological tester under dry friction conditions in the gross fretting regime. The number of cycles was set to 18000, temperature was 30 °C, the stroke was set to 0.1 mm, the normal load was 45 N. A ceramic ball from tungsten carbide (WC) material of 10 mm diameter was put in contact with steel discs of various surface textures with hardness of 47 and 59 HRC. It was found that the average coefficient of friction and volumetric wear of the tribological system were inversely proportional to disc roughness height. These dependencies were stronger for higher disc hardness.