Interrupted Measurement Repositioning Using Elastic Averaging

In many cases, it is impractical or prohibitively expensive to develop new instrumentation to study tribo-logical phenomena in situ, but with the application of elastic averaging, to accurately locate two surfaces with respect to one another, this can be realized with existing peripheral diagnostic equipment. A sample fixture was designed using the principles of elastic averaging that allows for the separation and repeatable repositioning of a tribological test specimen. Using an optical interferometer and digital image correlation, the fixture was determined to have average repositioning errors of <2 mu m, in both the x and y directions. The application of these simple design principles could provide an accurate, repeatable, and low-cost solution for interrupted tribological studies.