An Investigation into 'Squeezing'or Three-Body Wear caused by Abrasive Particles

Sammanfattning: Material wear is an ever present phenomenon and can never be completely removed in systems of moving parts. There will always be friction between materials, causing degradation of these materials and eventually the material will be worn out and have to be replaced. In industrial applications, the cost of failure of a material is severe and thus it is important to understand how long a material will operate at a certain working condition. Thus in order to be able to predict the life of a material, the wear mechanisms of the application need to be understood. Squeezing wear or three body wear is a phenomenon occurring when abrasive particles are rolling between two material surfaces. This is not a well researched field, especially when it concerns two steel surfaces with abrasives present between them. Thus the objective of this study was to observe the effect of abrasive particles on the wear of the materials. For this purpose, pin and disk wear tests were conducted both in the presence and absence of abrasive particles. The results show that the abrasive particles act as a buffer between the two materials and hence the specific wear rate observed when the abrasive particles are present is far lesser than the specific wear rate in their absence. Thus this confirms previous research findings that the rate of wear in three body abrasion is lower than the wear rate in two body abrasion. Adhesive wear was observed in one of the material combinations in the absence of abrasive particles. This is a severe type of wear and occurs at far higher rate than observed for two-body or three-body abrasion.