SIMULATED STUDY OF SLIDING WEAR

Abstract

Wear of components is often a critical factor influencing the product service life. Wear prediction is therefore an important part of engineering. Sliding bearings are designed to transmit force between two surfaces that are in relative motion. When these bearings are used unlubricated, they suffered from penalty of high friction and wear. Tin-based Babbitts are widely used as a bearing material because they have excellent properties to resist friction and wear. This work presents the analysis of unlubricated contact between cylindrical pin of Tin-based Babbbitt and Steel disc both experimentally and utilizing FEM. The experiments have been carried out on Tribometer for different loads and velocities and the results are presented in figures. Simulation is a quantitative procedure that describes a system by developing a model of that system and then conducting a series of organized trial-and-error experiments to predict the behavior of the system over time. Simulation offers the solution by allowing experimentation with a model of the system without interfering with the real system. The finite element software ANSYS is well suited for the solving of contact problems as well as wear simulation, hence, ANSYS is used to carry out simulation. ANSYS has the capability to use "contact" elements to simulate interaction between parts of an assembly, which are, or eventually come into contact during the course of the simulation. The simulations performed for two-dimensional surface-to-surface contacts, with the appropriate symmetries applied to reduce the computational effort. The finite element wear simulation results of pin and disc geometry and loading can be treated on the basis of wear depth-sliding distance change equivalence.