New Bench Test to Study Mild Lubricated Wear

This extended abstract describes a new bench test for measuring and studying mild, lubricated wear. The method combines MTM, which is able to produce contra-rotation so as to obtain high sliding speed while retaining low entrainment speed and thus boundary lubrication conditions, with ICP which is employed to analyze trace levels of iron in lubricants so as to monitor mild wear throughout a test.

There are several well-known bench tests for assessing the wear properties of lubricants and materials, including the fourball, block on ring and V-block tests. However, none of these is well-suited for studying mild lubricated wear. All rely on the determination of wear from the size of the wear scar on the stationary body in a pure sliding, non-conforming contact configuration. However in this type of system, the wear process itself results in a large change in contact geometry and thus a contact pressure that varies significantly during the wear test. Also these approaches generally provide a measure of wear only at the end of the test; wear cannot be monitored throughout it. The paper described a new method to quantify mild wear that addresses the above problems.