Dry and lubricated wear resistance of mechanically-alloyed aluminium-base sintered composites

The friction and wear behaviour of three mechanically alloyed aluminium-base materials, consolidated by an alternative powder-metallurgy process, has been studied with a pin-on-disk tribometer, sliding against AISI 52100 steel pins. Their tribological properties have been compared, using simple sintered aluminium, as standard material. Volume loss, under dry wear conditions, is very dependent on the measurement method. The more regular wear tracks, achieved under lubrication, allows the track-width method to be used with better accuracy. in general, unreinforced Al shows the lowest wear resistance, while composites with the highest hardness and second-phase Volume content are the most wear resistant, especially at high load. Unreinforced Al suffers a transition in wear mode, from mild to severe wear, at load 4.90 N-2 in lubricated tests. The wear mechanism is of the adhesive/abrasive type. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.