Design of Test Equipment for Fretting Wear at High Temperature

Abstract

Vibration can occurs in machinery equipment during operation leading to fretting wear. It is thisfretting mechanism which can lead into other wear types such as abrasive wear, fatigue wear and threebodywear. In order to carry out the work in research and development of materials and surfaces to improvethe fretting wear protection, the fretting wear testing equipment to simulate the testing condition as close aspossible to the operating condition is required. The majority of the industrial machinery are worn out by asurface contact nature as oppose to a point contact. For this reason, the result from Flat-on-flat fretting weartesting machine is widely used as a reference in many industries. Moreover, testing at elevated temperatureis also an important function of the wear testing machine because the wear mechanism occurred can varygreatly with the change in temperature. The objective of the work was, therefore, to set up a flat-on-flatfretting wear testing equipment at high temperature and to test the bulk stainless steel test piece in comparisonwith WC-17%Co thermal-spray coated specimens at 500°C.

The result showed that the wear testing machine is capable of simulating the fretting wear at hightemperature. It can be used to study the fretting wear mechanism, and to observe the oxidation behavior andits effect. In additional, the test conditions used in the tester such as testing temperature, velocity frequencyand amplitude of test pieces motion can be altered to suit variety of applications and materials tested. Thetests performed in this project showed that the wear tester can be used to compare the wear property betweenbulk material and coatings which will greatly benefit the industries in the selection of appropriatematerials and coatings for engine parts and components.

Keywords : Wear Testing Machine / High Temperature Wear / Fretting Wear / Third Body Wear