Tribological Aspects of Wear of Polished Steel Surfaces in dry Friction Contact on Polymer Composites with Glass Fibres

It is generally known that the friction and wear between polymers and polished steel surfaces has a special character, the behaviour to friction and wear of a certain polymer might not be valid for a different polymer, moreover in dry friction conditions. In this paper, the reaction to wear of certain polymers with short glass fibres (polyamide + 20% glass fibres, polyamide + 30% glass fibres and polycarbonate with 20% glass fibres) on different steel surfaces was studied, considering the linear friction contact, observing the friction influence over the metallic surfaces wear. The paper includes also its analysis over the steel’s wear from different points of view: the reinforcement content influence and tribological parameters (load, contact pressure, sliding speed, contact temperature, etc.). Thus, authors' findings related to the fact that the abrasive component of the friction force is more significant than the adhesive component are presented, which generally is specific to the polymers’ friction. Authors’ detections also state that, in the case of the polyamide with 30% glass fibres, the steel surface linear wear rate order are of 10-4 mm/h, respectively the order of volumetric wear rate is of 10-6 cm3 /h. The resulting volumetric wear coefficients are of the order (10-11 – 10-12) cm3/cm and respectively linear wear coefficients of 10-9 mm/cm.