Fretting wear of thin steel wires. Part 1: Influence of contact pressure

Different fretting tests of thin steel wires under different conditions (loads, strokes, number of cycles and mean pressures) were performed. The wires used had 0.45 mm in diameter and the material was a cold-drawn eutectoid carbon steel (0.8% C) with a tensile strength over 2800 MPa. The tests were carried out with 90° “crossed cylinders” configuration varying the stroke, normal load and testing time (number of cycles). Afterwards the volumetric wear was obtained using surface profilometry with diamond stylus. With a classical study of the coefficient of wear with respect to the sliding distance, the results show that the wear coefficient increases with normal load and stroke, consequently, for the same sliding distance, the wear produced was higher when the load and/or stroke is increased. In this work, the coefficient of wear is decreasing continuously as the test is running. In order to analyze better the wear behaviour, another method, in which the volumetric wear is compared with respect to the Archardʹs loading factor, is proposed. As result of this method, two distinctive behaviours were detected; one corresponds to the running-in period with a more aggressive wear behaviour and the second one to the stable steady state period. In all the tests the running-in period was similar with regard to the wear rates but in the stable period the wear rates were increasing with higher loads or strokes.