SCUFFING AS EVALUATED FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF SURFACE-ROUGHNESS AND FRICTION ENERGY

The surface scuffing occurring in line-contact lubrication is related to the roller's roughness pattern and asperity height. For surfaces wi th same contact asperity height, the magnitudes of friction power (P-f = fW V-s) relevant to various roughness patterns are found to have th e same sequence as the critical local temperatures. Instead of using t he nominal contact area, the real contact area (A(t)) is used to obtai n the true friction power intensity (P-th = P-f/A(t)). A new scuffing failure model (P-tfi.sigma(-0.317) = C, where sigma denote rms roughne ss) shows that the scuffing resistance of surfaces with transverse rou ghness pattern is higher than that of surfaces with longitudinal and o blique patterns. For certain roughness patterns, a high root mean squa re roughness height sigma is always associated with the high P-tfi val ue just before scuffing.