Development of Atmosphere-controlled Tribometer and Fail-safe Analysis

摘要

The design of existing tribometer mainly focuses on normal pressure and environmental conditions, and aims to measure the effect of load and speed on material performance. The effect of gas pressure and environmental condition on performance of materials is usually not considered. Thus, data from friction tests are not precise. In this paper, a new atmosphere tribometer is developed to study the tribological behavior of materials under severe rugged atmosphere. A fail-safe analysis is performed through reproducibility, comparability, and sensitivity tests. The tribometer allows tests to be performed in block-circle disc line contact, pin-circle disc line contact, and block-circle disc face contact configurations at controlled atmosphere and gas pressure. A self-centering plant is designed to settle the poor contact problem. A pin-on-disk test is conducted, and the test results indicate that the proposed design is efficient. A combined sealing style is introduced to control gas leaks. Compared with other sealing styles, the combined sealing is found to meet the experiment requirements best. And the reproducibility, comparability, and sensitivity tests validate the performance of the tribometer. The designed atmosphere tribometer reliably simulates the friction test under extremely harsh conditions, enhances the ability for material tribological properties test, and ensures accuracy of the tribological data.