An environmental tribometer for the study of rubbing surface reactivity

A new tribometer was designed to study the reactivity of rubbing surfaces under controlled environmental conditions. The contacting samples are isolated from the atmosphere by a chamber under secondary vacuum (10−6 mbar) where reactive gasses can be injected. The sample chamber can also be heated up to 900 °C by a radiative furnace. The sliding velocity can be varied from 0.05 to 1.5 m/s and the applied load from 5 to 100 N (contact pressure ranged between 130 MPa and 1.3 GPa). The instrumentation of the tribometer enables continuous measurement of the normal and tangential forces, vertical displacement of the contacting samples, temperature in the vicinity of the contact zone, partial pressure and gas composition in the test chamber and electrical contact resistance. The design difficulties have been exposed and the chosen technological solutions are presented. A test has been carried out to validate the tribological device.