Dry sliding wear of an Al2O3 continuous fibre reinforced Al-Cu alloy against steel counterface

The tribological properties of Al2O3 continuous fibre reinforced Al-4.43 wt %Cu alloy composites with a fibres' volume fraction of about 0.55 were mea sured for five types of fibre orientations under a dry sliding contact with a bearing steel. Fibres were in a plain perpendicular to wear surface and parallel to sliding direction, and had the angles 0 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, or 135 degrees with respect to the direction of motion of the cou nterface; or were anti-parallel the sliding direction. The results show obv ious dependence of wear characteristics on fibres orientation: for the 45 d egrees, 90 degrees, and 135 degrees orientations, the larger the fibres' an gle, the lower the volume loss; while the 0 degrees orientation resulted in a higher steady-state wear rate than those of the 45 degrees, 90 degrees, and 135 degrees, orientations, except that the anti-parallel orientation ca used the highest volume loss at all sliding distances. The wear mechanism w as inferred as a oxidation-microgrooving process through the analyses of wo rn surface and subsurface with the aid of optical microscope and scanning e lectron microscope. Also it was found that the fibres' broken and subsurfac e deformation had played an important role in causing wear anisotropy. (C) 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.