The Study And Manufacture Of Reciprocating Tribometer & Friction Test

Tribology is the study of friction, lubrication and wear of contacted surfaces in relativemotion. Normal load and relative velocity are important factors in determining friction andwear of materials, furthermore, surface roughness and operating modes affect also interfacewear. Thus wear, as friction, is not material property, it is a system response. At theconceptual and theoretical levels, however, recent advances have revealed the enormouscomplexity of even the simplest tribological process. It is seen that friction and wear tests arecrucial to the study of tribology. Generally, it is important to develop various noveltribometers for tribological researchers. For economical, ecological and even technicalreasons for some years there has been a tendency to introduce self-lubricating materials forbearing applications. However, self-lubricating bearings usually slide against steel under dryand reciprocating motion conditions. The objective of the present study is to develop a newreciprocating simulation tester. The major works carried out are as follows:1. Hydraulic system provides normal load, which makes tester be able to controlledprecisely by computer system. The tester can provide the maximum normal load of 30 kN byhydraulic system.2. Six-bar linkage which can provide the maximum reciprocating frequency of 4 Hz underthe normal load of 30 kN is used in this tester.3. This tribometer consists of main body, hydraulic station, data acquisition and controlsystem. Using VB program, this tester can not only finish data acquisition, data analysis, datasaving, creat test report and alarm automatically, but also be controlled by remote client.4. Fiction and wear tests were performed, in order to measure coefficient of friction andwear rate of the polyoxymethylene (POM) self-lubricating composite without lead. Testresults showed that POM composite without lead exhibited low coefficient of friction andhigh wear resistance as the conventional POM composite with lead. tests show that the tribometer designed in the present study run smoothly and steadily,revealed a high accuracy of measurement of friction and wear. This tribometer is useful forthe study of self-lubricating materials.