Thermally induced wear of ceramics

Wear of ceramics under dry sliding conditions is often governed by friction al heating. In this paper, a method is presented to predict the boundary be tween the mild wear regime and the severe wear regime due to frictional hea ting, and to a lesser extent, the prediction of the wear rate. To obtain th is, the work of Bos was used to calculate contact temperatures. This model is essentially a fit, based on numerical calculations, making it possible t o include heat partitioning between dissimilar materials while retaining cl osed form expressions. The stress resulting from the contact temperature ca n be compared with material properties to obtain the thermal severity of a contact. A dimensionless thermal severity number, TS, is introduced to dete rmine the thermal severity of a contact. The model has been experimentally justified using alumina pin on zirconia disc measurements. (C) 1999 Publish ed by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.