FRICTION MICROPROBE INVESTIGATION OF PARTICLE LAYER EFFECTS ON SLIDING FRICTION

Interfacial particles (third bodies), resulting from wear or external contamination, can alter and even dominate the frictional behavior of solid-solid sliding in the absence of effective particle removal processes (eg. lubricant flow). A unique friction microprobe, developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was used to conduct fine-scale friction studies using 1.0 mm diameter stainless steel spheres sliding on several sizes of loose layers of fine aluminum oxide powders on both aluminum and alumina surfaces. Conventional, pin-on-disk experiments were conducted to compare behavior with the friction microprobe results. The behavior of the relatively thick particle layers was found to be independent of the nature of underlying substrate, substantiating previous work by other investigators. The time-dependent behavior of friction, for a spherical macrocontact starting from rest, could generally be represented by a series of five rather distinct phases involving static compression, slider breakaway, transition to steady state, and dynamic layer instability. A friction model for the steady state condition, which incorporates lamellar powder layer behavior, is described.