THE RUNNING-IN WEAR OF A STEEL SICP-AL COMPOSITE SYSTEM/

Running-in, mild and severe wear are three: typical wear regimes of a wear system. The running-in wear is of particular interest in MMC/stee l systems. In this paper, the funning-in wear was investigated in the system of a steel disk and SiC-particle-reinforced 2014 Al composite p ins. It was found that the wear mechanisms of the system were dominate d by abrasion and that the fracture of the reinforced particles played an important role. Based on the experimental observations, theoretica l models were proposed for the running-in wear of both the steel and m etal matrix composites, respectively. The predictions of the models we re in good agreement with the experimental results.