The transition between high and low wear regimes under multidirectional reciprocating sliding

The wear phenomena and wear characteristics of reciprocating sliding wear with superimposed lateral vibrations were investigated using a ball-on-disc tribometer. The tribometer enabled two orthogonal oscillations, whereas one oscillation had a constant amplitude of 1 mm (primary oscillation) and the other one had a variable amplitude from 0 to 20.2 μm (secondary oscillation). Ball and disc were made of AISI 52100 steel. The ball surface was polished and the disc surface was unidirectionally grinded parallel to the direction of primary oscillation. Two regimes with different wear rates were found, being separated by a characteristic transition amplitude of 2.7 ± 0.4 μm in the secondary oscillation. This transition correlated with a change of wear mechanisms from tribochemically to mechanically dominated wear. A wear model based on surface topography and particle motion was developed. The wear model is able to predict the value of the transition amplitude by means of characteristic topographical data and the size of wear particles.