Module 3

Wear - Introduction
• The removal of material from one or both of two solid surfaces in relative motion
(sliding, rolling or impact) is termed as wear.

Surface damage due to material

displacement with no net change
in volume or weight is also
called wear.

System response and not

mechanical property.
 Wear - Introduction
• Wear can either be desirable or undesirable.

• Desirable cases include machining, polishing, shearing, writing with a pencil.

• Undesirable cases include bearings, gears, cams and almost all machine
applications involving relative motion.

• Leads to a reduction in operating

efficiency.

• Frequent replacement or repair of worn

components.

• Overhauling of the machinery may

cost enormously in terms of labour,
machine down-time and energy in the
manufacture of spares.
Wear - Introduction
 Factors influencing wear
The major factors influencing wear are given below:
 Variable connected with metallurgy.
 Hardness.
 Toughness.
 Constitution and structure.
 Chemical composition.
 Variables connected with service.
 Contacting materials.
 Pressure.
 Speed.
 Temperature.
 Other contributing factors.
 Lubrication.
 Corrosion
 Forms of wear
• There are more than 34 mechanisms of wear

• Abrasive Wear
– Polishing, scouring, scratching, grinding, gouging
• Adhesive Wear Main elementary
– galling, scuffing, scoring forms of wear
• Corrosive Wear (Chemical nature)
• Fatigue
– Delamination

• Cavitation (interaction with fluid)

• Erosive Wear Special forms of
• Fretting Wear wear
• Oxidative

Note: Combination of different wear modes

 Forms of wear
 There are many situations in which wear can change from one type to another.

 Adhesive wear may be responsible for generating hard wear debris which then leads to
abrasive wear.

 Abrasive wear and chemical wear operate together in marine diesel engine cylinder
liners.

 In the unlubricated sliding of two steel surfaces, material may be removed by

mechanical means after oxidation.

 Under conditions of boundary lubrication, the source of wear is often the mechanical
removal of the products of chemical reaction between the steel surface and the lubricant
additives.
 Abrasive wear
• Abrasive wear occurs when asperities of a rough, hard surface or hard particles
slide on a softer surface and damage the interface by plastic deformation or
fracture.

• In the case of ductile materials with high fracture toughness (e.g., metals and
alloys), hard asperities or hard particles result in the plastic flow of the softer
material.
– Micro-cutting: sharp particle or hard asperity cuts the softer surface;
– Micro-fatigue: When a ductile material is abraded by a blunt particle/asperity then cutting is
unlikely and the worn surface is repeatedly loaded and unloaded.

• In the case of brittle materials (ceramic) with low fracture toughness, wear occurs
by brittle fracture.
– Micro-fracture: Fracture of the worn surface occurs due to merging of a number of smaller cracks.
 Abrasive wear
• Two basic modes of abrasive wear are:
– Two body abrasion
– Three body abrasion

Two body abrasion:

 Two interacting asperities in physical contact, and one of them is harder than other.
 Normal load causes penetration of harder asperities into softer surface thus
producing plastic deformations.
 To slide, the material is displaced/removed from the softer surface by combined
action of micro-ploughing & micro-cutting.
 Abrasive wear
• Two basic modes of abrasive wear are:
– Two body abrasion
– Three body abrasion

Three body abrasion:

 Material removal from softer surface by hard loose particles.

 Generated locally by oxidation or wear-out.
 Example: Iron oxides wear debris produced during adhesive wear cause further damage by
abrasion.
 Clearance larger than particle size and filtration reduce chances.
 Abrasive wear
• Two basic modes of abrasive wear are:
– Two body abrasion
– Three body abrasion

Three body abrasion:

 Such shape difference may result
in differences in wear rate by factor
of ten or more.
Roundness Factor

P = Perimeter
 Abrasive wear – constitutive equation
Assume conical asperities indenting soft
surface during traverse motion and all the
material displaced by the cone is lost as wear
debris. Here basic assumptions are :

• All asperities can be represented by equal

dimensions cones.

• All the material displaced by the conical

asperity in a single pass is removed as wear
particles.

Load carried by nth asperity Volume swept by penetrated asperity:

v  a.x.L
w= H(0.5×π×a2)
or, v  a.a / tan .L
where H is the hardness or, v  wn /(0.5H t an ).L
 Abrasive wear – constitutive equation
Total wear is sum of the wear caused by
individual asperity.

K is a non-dimensional wear coefficient that considers the geometry of

asperities and probability of formation of wear particle.
 Adhesive wear
• Adhesive wear occurs when two nominally flat solid bodies are in sliding
contact, whether lubricated or not.

• Adhesion (or bonding) occurs at the asperity contacts at the interface, and these
contacts are sheared by sliding, which may result in the detachment of a
fragment from one surface and attachment to the other surface.

• As the sliding continues, the transferred fragments may come off the surface on
which they are transferred and be transferred back to the original surface, or else
form loose wear particles.

• Some are fractured by a fatigue process during repeated loading and unloading
action resulting in formation of loose particles.
 Adhesive wear
• Several mechanisms have been proposed for the detachment of a fragment of a
material.

• In an early theory of sliding wear (still well recognized), it was suggested that
shearing can occur at the original interface or in the weakest region in one of the
two bodies (Archard, 1953).

• In most cases, interfacial adhesion strength is expected to be small as compared

to the breaking strength of surrounding local regions.

• The break during shearing occurs at the interface (path 1) in most of the contacts
and no wear occurs in that sliding cycle.

• In a small fraction of contacts, break may occur in one of the two bodies (path
2) and a small fragment may become attached to the other surface.

fragments are irregular and blocky shaped

 Adhesive wear
• In another mechanism, plastic shearing of successive layers of an asperity
contact result in detachment of a wear fragment.

• According to this theory, plastic shearing of successive layers based on a slip

line field occurs in conjunction .with the propagation of a shear crack, along
which the fragment detaches.

• This process results in thin wedge-shaped transfer fragments.

• The fragment is detached from one surface and transferred to the mating surface
because of adhesion.

Schematic showing detachment of fragment

of a material from plastic shearing of
successive layers of an asperity contact.
 Adhesive wear

SEM micrograph of 303 SEM micrograph of cross section of 303

stainless steel shaft surface after stainless steel shaft after adhesive wear.
adhesive wear under dry
conditions. Sliding direction is along the vertical axis.

Sliding direction is along the

vertical axis.
 Adhesive wear – constitutive equation

• The amount of wear is generally proportional to the applied load W and sliding
distance x and generally inversely proportional to the hardness H of the surface
being worn away.

• That is, the volume of wear being worn away:

where k is a nondimensional wear coefficient dependent on the materials in

contact and their cleanliness
 Adhesive wear – constitutive equation

• Archard (1953) presented the theoretical basis for the expression.

• Consider two surfaces in a sliding contact under applied load W.

• Assume that during an asperity interaction, the asperities deform plastically under the
applied load and that at each unit event there is a definite probability that a wear particle
will be produced.

• Further assume that contact is made up of asperities with an average radius of a

Schematic of a hypothetical model of generation of a hemispherical wear particle during a

sliding contact.
 Adhesive wear – constitutive equation

• If the material has yielded under the maximum normal load dW, supported by an
asperity:

where H is the mean contact pressure under the condition of full plasticity, flow pressure,
or hardness of the softer material.

We now assume that this asperity contact results in a worn particle of volume dv.

If a particle is assumed to be hemispherical in shape with radius equal to the contact

radius, then:

Finally, contact is assumed to remain in existence for a sliding distance dx equal to 2a

after which it is broken and the load is taken up by a new contact
 Adhesive wear – constitutive equation
Finally, contact is assumed to remain in existence for a sliding distance dx equal to 2a
after which it is broken and the load is taken up by a new contact

If only a fraction of all encounters produce wear particles, then the volume of wear by
all asperities is:
Archard’s equation of adhesive
wear

• The term k is usually interpreted as the probability that transfer of a material fragment
occurs or a wear particle is formed to a given asperity encounter.
• k ranges typically from 10−8 to 10−4 for mild wear and from 10−4 to 10−2 for severe
wear for most material combinations.
• Dependent on the operating conditions.
• Archard’s analysis suggests that there should be two simple rules of wear.
• The wear rate is independent of the apparent area and is directly proportional to the
applied load.
 Understanding k
• k = 1. Every junction involved in the friction process produces a wear fragment.

• k = 0.1. One tenth of the friction junctions produce wear fragments.

• For clean gold surfaces k is between 0.1 and 1.

• For clean-copper surfaces k is between 0.1 and 0.01.

• Clean gold surfaces wear about ten times more rapidly than clean copper surfaces.

• k = 10-7 means that of the junctions responsible for friction only one in ten million
produces a wear fragment.
 Guidelines on adhesive wear
• For longer service life or reliability of machines, wear behavior must be in
mild regime.
• Choose Dissimilar metals.
• Under constraint of identical metals, choose the maximum hardness.
• If severe wear behavior cannot be avoided, such as in ore processing or earth
moving equipments, routine maintenance is essential

Many plastics undergo a transition from Wear constant

mild to severe wear as a function of of Plastics
sliding speed (that increase temp.) or
combination of sliding and contact
pressure.
 Mild adhesive wear

• Small wear fragments (0.01 to 1 µm).

• Mostly surface film such as metal oxides (black powdered oxide).

• Low contact pressure (below transition limit) and sliding velocity.

• At higher velocities, more oxidation replenishes losses due to break-away of oxide

fragment as wear debris.

• At higher loads, a hard surface layer (most likely martensite) is formed on carbon-
steel surfaces because of high flash temperatures, followed by rapid quenching as
heat is conducted into underlying bulk.
 Severe adhesive wear
• If load increases, the oxide film cracks off, exposing fresh metal which welds and
wear rate may increase several hundred fold.

• 20 to 200 µm metallic particles.

Seizure

“To bind” or “fasten together”.

 Causes:
 Poor heat dissipation
 Poor lubrication or improper
lubricant.
 Smaller Clearance.
 Installation error (Excessive load).

Observation: Excessive loading & heating

govern the Seizure phenomenon.
 Fatigue wear
• Subsurface and surface fatigues are observed during repeated rolling
(negligible friction) and sliding, respectively.

• The repeated loading and unloading cycles to which the materials are exposed
may induce the formation of subsurface or surface cracks.

• This eventually, after a critical number of cycles, will result in the breakup of
the surface with the formation of large fragments.

• Leave behind large pits in the surface, also known as pitting.

 Fatigue wear
• Prior to this critical point (which may be hundreds, thousands, or even
millions of cycles), negligible wear takes place.

• This is in marked contrast to the wear caused by an adhesive or abrasive

mechanism, where wear causes a gradual deterioration from the start of
running.

• Therefore, the amount of material removed by fatigue wear is not a useful

parameter.

• Much more relevant is the useful life in terms of the number of revolutions or
time before fatigue failure occurs.
 Fatigue wear

Fatigue wear in rolling:

• Application of normal load that induce

stresses at contact points.

• Growth of plastic deformation per cycle.

• Subsurface crack nucleation

• Expansion of crack due to reversal of

stress

• Extension of crack to the surface due to

traction force

• Generation of wear particles

 Fatigue wear
Fatigue wear in sliding:

• We have seen that, when sliding surfaces make contact via asperities, wear can take
place by adhesion and abrasion.

• However, it is conceivable that asperities can make contact without adhering or

abrading and can pass each other, leaving one or both asperities plastically deformed
from the contact stresses.

• As the surface and subsurface deformation continues, cracks are nucleated at and
below the surface.

• Once the cracks are present (either by crack nucleation or from pre-existing voids or
cracks), further loading and deformation cause cracks to extend and propagate.
 Fatigue wear
Fatigue wear in sliding:

• After a critical number of contacts, an asperity fails due to fatigue, producing a wear
fragment.

• In a sliding contact, friction is generally high compared to a rolling contact, and the
maximum shear stress occurs at the surface, which leads to surface fatigue.

• This may be the situation in a boundary lubrication system in which one or several
monolayers of lubricant or absorbed surface layers at the interface separate the
asperities but contact stresses are still experienced by the asperities.
 Fatigue wear
Fatigue wear in sliding:
 Chemical (corrosive) wear
• Chemical or corrosive wear occurs when sliding takes place in a corrosive
environment.

• In air, the most dominant corrosive medium is oxygen.

• Therefore, chemical wear in air is generally called oxidative wear.

• In the absence of sliding, the chemical products of the corrosion (e.g., oxides) would
form a film typically less than a micrometer thick on the surfaces.

• This would tend to slow down or even arrest the corrosion.

• But the sliding action wears the chemical film away, so that the chemical attack can
continue.

• Thus, chemical wear requires both chemical reaction (corrosion) and rubbing.
 Chemical (corrosive) wear
• Machinery operating in an industrial environment or near the coast generally
produces chemical products (i.e., it corrodes) more rapidly than when operating in a
clean environment.

• Chemical wear is important in a number of industries, such as mining, mineral

processing, chemical processing, and slurry handling.

• Stages:
• Sliding surfaces chemically interact with environment (humid/industrial
vapor/Acid)
• A reaction product (like oxide, chlorides, copper sulphide)
• Wearing away of reaction product film.

• NOTE: Particles of reaction product may act as abrasive.

Chemical (corrosive) wear

Passivation of corrosion Continuous corrosion.

 Chemical (corrosive) wear

• Thin corrosive layers play protective role.

• Growth in thickness becomes liable for brittle fracture.

• High temperatures enhance surface energy, thereby increase

thickness.
 Oxidative wear

• This is another form of adhesive wear.

• Metallic surfaces exposed to any atmosphere bearing oxygen will get oxidized
and thin oxide film will be formed on the surface.

• This oxide film diminishes the adhesive wear and result in mild wear.

• However, during sliding it gets ruptured if not adherent to the surface and results
in wear debris predominantly oxide in nature.
 Fretting wear

• This type of wear is also known by several names viz. Frettage, fretting
corrosion, false brinelling, wear oxidation, friction oxidation and chafing
fatigue.

• It is a combination of adhesive, corrosive and abrasive wear.

• Fretting corrosion.

• This form of wear arises when contacting surfaces undergo oscillatory tangential
displacement of small amplitude.

• Normal load causes adhesion between asperities.

• Tangential oscillatory motion causes rupture resulting in wear debris.

• Examples include bolted parts, shrink fits, etc.

 Fretting wear
Schematic View of Fretting Wear Mechanism.

SEM micrographs of 303 stainless steel shaft

surface after fretting corrosion.
 Erosive wear
• Caused by the impact of particles (solid/liquid) against a solid surface.
• Dust particles impacting on gas turbine blades.
• Slurry impacting on pump impeller.
• Erosive wear is function of:
 Particles velocity (K.E.),
 impact angle, and
 size of abrasive

• The particle velocity and impact angle combined with the size of the
abrasive give a measure of the kinetic energy of the impinging particles,
that is, of the square of the velocity.

• Wear debris formed in erosion occurs as a result of repeated impacts.

 Erosive wear
• Two basic erosion mechanisms have been observed for erosion of ductile
materials: cutting erosion and deformation (plowing) erosion.

• In cutting erosion, the detachment of crater lips occurs by one or several

impacts of the micromachining, plowing or lip formation type.

• Cutting erosion is, in many respects, similar to abrasive wear.

• In deformation erosion, the detachment of the material occurs by surface

fragmentation due to several impacts of the indentation type.

• The effect of a single-indentation-type crater is to raise small lips of

material around the impact type.

• The effect of successive impacts is to flatten and to strain further the lips,
creating thin platelets of highly stressed metal that are finally knocked off
the surface by succeeding particles.
 Erosive wear

Schematic of a jet of abrasive particles

hitting a surface at a high velocity.
 Erosive wear

If k is the proportion of the displaced material result as wear debris, then

volume of displaced material is:

The erosion wear equation is normally written in terms of dimensionless

erosion ratio (E), the mass of material removed divided by the mass of
erosive particles striking the surface.

where ρ is the density of the material being eroded.

 Cavitation wear

• Cavitation is defined as the repeated nucleation, growth, and violent collapse of

cavities or bubbles in a liquid.

• Cavitation erosion arises when a solid and fluid are in relative motion, and bubbles
formed in the fluid become unstable and implode against the surface of the solid.

• When bubbles collapse that are in contact with or very close to a solid surface, they
will collapse asymmetrically.

• Form a microjet of liquid directed toward the solid and shock waves.

• Localized impact of fluid against a surface during the collapse of bubbles

 Cavitation wear

• The solid material will absorb the impact energy as elastic deformation, plastic
deformation or fracture.

• The latter two processes may cause localized deformation and/or erosion of the solid
surface

• Damage by this process is found in components such as ships’ propellers and

centrifugal pumps.

• All liquids contain gaseous, liquid and solid impurities, which act as nucleation sites
for the bubbles or vapor-filled voids.
 Cavitation wear

• The solid material will absorb the impact energy as elastic deformation, plastic
deformation or fracture.

• The latter two processes may cause localized deformation and/or erosion of the solid
surface

• Damage by this process is found in components such as ships’ propellers and

centrifugal pumps.

• All liquids contain gaseous, liquid and solid impurities, which act as nucleation sites
for the bubbles or vapor-filled voids.
 Delamination theory of wear

Point 1:

• When two sliding surfaces interact, the asperities of softer surface get flattened and
fractured by repeated loading.

• Form small wear particles.

• Hard particles are removed at a slower rate.

• A relatively smooth surface is generated initially either when these asperities are
deformed or when they are removed.
 Delamination theory of wear

Point 2:

• The surface traction exerted by the harder asperities at the contact points induces
incremental plastic deformation on each cycle of loading.

• This accumulates with repeated loading.

 Delamination theory of wear

Point 3:

• As the sub-surface deformation continues, nucleation of cracks takes place under the
surface.

• Crack nucleation cannot occur very near the surface.

• This is due to the triaxial state of compressive loading, which exist just below the
contact region.
 Delamination theory of wear

Point 4:

• Once cracks are present, further loading and deformation causes the cracks to extend
and propagate.

• Eventually joins the neighboring cracks.

• The cracks tend to propagate parallel to the surface at a depth governed by the
material properties and the state of loading.
 Delamination theory of wear

Point 5:

• When the cracks finally shear to the surface, long and thin wear sheets delaminate.

• The thickness of the wear sheet is determined by the location of sub-surface crack
growth.

• This is governed by the normal and tangential loads at the surface.

• The wear rate is controlled by the crack nucleation rate or the crack propagation
rate, whichever is slower.
 Debris analysis

• The size and shape of debris may change during sliding in dry and lubricated
systems.

• The condition of a system can be monitored by debris sampling.

• Mild wear is characterized by finely divided wear debris (typically 0.01–1 μm in

particle size).

• The worn surface is relatively smooth.

• Severe wear, results in much larger particles, typically on the order of 20–200 μm in
size.

• Particles are collected during sliding for analysis from dry interfaces by sucking air
from the sliding interface on a filter paper.

• Particles in a sample of lubricant are recovered by filtration, centrifuging, or

magnetically (for magnetic particles).
 Debris analysis

• The size, shape, structural, and chemical details of particles are analyzed.

• Various techniques including:

• Optical microscopy
• Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
• Transmission and scanning transmission electron microscopy (TEM/STEM)
• Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS)
• Auger electron spectroscopy (AES)
• X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS)
• X-ray diffraction (XRD)
 Debris analysis

Plate-Shaped Particles

• Thin, plate-shaped or flake-type wear

particles with an aspect ratio of 2–10, are
commonly found in wear debris from dry and
lubricated interfaces.

• These particles are produced as a result of

plowing followed by repeated loading and
unloading fatigue.

• Result of nucleation and propagation of

subsurface cracks or plastic shear in the
asperity contacts
 Debris analysis

Ribbon-Shaped Particles

• Ribbon-shaped or cutting-type particles are

frequently found with aspect ratios, on the
order of ten or more.

• Usually are curved and even curly.

• These are produced as a result of plastic

deformation.

• They have all the characteristics of

machining chips.

• The ribbon-shaped particles are referred to as

micro-cutting chips or cutting chips.
 Debris analysis

Spherical Particles

• Spherical particles are not common.

• Wear particles of various shapes may not

escape from the interface to become loose
debris.

• Some of them remain trapped and are

processed further as in the spherical shape.

• Spherical particles have been observed in

sliding, fretting and rolling contact fatigue
 Debris analysis

Irregularly Shaped Particles

• The majority of particles have an irregular

morphology.

• Wear debris produced by detachment of the

transferred fragment in adhesive wear and
brittle fracture are irregularly shaped.
 Wear of metals

Wear coefficient of softer material for various metal-metal pairs at a normal load of 20
N and a sliding velocity of 1.8 m/s. The stated value of hardness is that of the softer
wearing material in each example.
 Wear of ceramics

Abrasive wear coefficient values of various ceramic pairs at room temperature (self-
mated couples) in a three-body abrasive wear experiment at a normal load of 10 N,
hydrocarbon-base lapping fluid and 600-grit SiC.
 Systems approach to wear reduction

• When surfaces are in relative motion, wear cannot be completely eliminated.

• It can only be reduced to an insignificant level.

• Designer may change the system in such a way so as to reduce wear if it is

unacceptable.

• The wear rate in a particular system is governed by the interaction of many factors
such as:
 The structure of mechanical system: Materials making up the surface, interface and
environment, etc.
 The operating variables: load, speed, temperature, etc.

• Wear can be reduced and controlled by all the above mentioned variables and proper
lubrication, selection of materials and surface properties.

• All these are performed in systems approach to wear analysis/reduction.

Thank You