Modelling the entrainment and motion of particles in a gap: Application to abrasive wear

The microscale abrasion or ball-cratering test is being increasingly applied to a wide range of bulk materials and coatings. The response of materials to this test depends critically on the nature of the motion of the abrasive particles in the contact zone: whether they roll and produce multiple indentations in the coating, or slide causing grooving abrasion. Similar phenomena also occur when hard contaminant particles enter a lubricated contact. This paper presents simple quantitative two-dimensional models which describe two aspects of the interaction between a hard abrasive particle and two sliding surfaces. The first model treats the conditions under which a spherical abrasive particle of size d can be entrained into the gap between a rotating sphere of radius R and a plane surface. These conditions are determined by the coefficients of friction between the particle and the sphere, and the particle and the plane, denoted by μs and μp respectively. This model predicts that the values of (μs + μp) and 2μs should both exceed √2d/R for the particles to be entrained into the contact. If either is less than this value, the particle will slide against the sphere and never enter the contact. The second model describes the mechanisms of abrasive wear in a contact when an idealized rhombus-sectioned prismatic particle is located between two parallel plane surfaces separated by a certain distance, which can represent either the thickness of a fluid film or the spacing due to the presence of other particles. It is shown that both the ratio of particle size to the separation of the surfaces and the ratio of the hardnesses of the two surfaces have important influences on the particle motion and hence on the mechanism of the resulting abrasive wear. Results from this model are compared with experimental observations, and the model is shown to lead to realistic predictions. © IMechE 2003.

Sensitivity of wear rates in the micro-scale abrasion test to test conditions and material hardness

Micro-scale abrasion (ball cratering) tests were performed with different combinations of ball and bulk specimen materials, under different test conditions, such as load and abrasive slurry concentration. Wear modes were classified into two types: with rolling particle motion and with grooving particle motion. Wear rates observed with rolling particle motion were relatively insensitive to test conditions, whereas with grooving motion they varied much more. It is suggested that rolling abrasion is therefore a more appropriate mode if reproducible test results are desired. The motion of the abrasive particles can be reliably predicted from the knowledge of hardnesses and elastic properties of the ball and the specimen, and from the normal load and the abrasive slurry concentration. General trends in wear resistance measured in the micro-scale abrasion test with rolling particle motion are similar to those reported in tests with fixed abrasives with sliding particle motion, although the variation in wear resistance with hardness is significantly smaller. © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Abrasion processes in wear and manufacturing

Abrasion by hard particles is responsible for wear in many practical situations, but can also be used constructively in grinding and polishing processes. A brief overview of abrasion is presented, followed by an historical survey of polishing and a discussion of laboratory abrasion test methods.

Electroosmotic flow analysis of a branched U-turn nanofluidic device.

In this paper, we present the analysis of electroosmotic flow in a branched -turn nanofluidic device, which we developed for detection and sorting of single molecules. The device, where the channel depth is only 150 nm, is designed to optically detect fluorescence from a volume as small as 270 attolitres (al) with a common wide-field fluorescent setup. We use distilled water as the liquid, in which we dilute 110 nm fluorescent beads employed as tracer-particles. Quantitative imaging is used to characterize the pathlines and velocity distribution of the electroosmotic flow in the device. Due to the device's complex geometry, the electroosmotic flow cannot be solved analytically. Therefore we use numerical flow simulation to model our device. Our results show that the deviation between measured and simulated data can be explained by the measured Brownian motion of the tracer-particles, which was not incorporated in the simulation.