Title: On the influence of indentation size effect on the wear of metallic alloys

Authors: S. Graça; R. Colaço

Addresses: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Feuerwerkerstrasse 39, CH-3602 Thun, Switzerland. ' BioEngineering Department and Centro de Química Estrutural, Instituto Superior Técnico, TU Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: In metallic alloys, apart from the linear decrease of the wear rate with decreasing load, an additional decrease of wear rate has been observed and attributed to a number of different causes. In the present paper it is shown that this effect can be properly quantified from the hardness variation of the material with indentation depth, usually referred as indentation size effect (ISE). It is shown that, due to ISE, a significant reduction of wear is expectable in metallic alloys, as the asperities penetrate the surface of these materials to depths smaller than a few microns. As a result we propose a modification to the Rabinowicz wear equation that accounts for this effect and fits experimental results.

Keywords: abrasive wear; indentation size effect; ISE; modelling; metallic alloys; hardness variation; indentation depth.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSURFSE.2011.044397

International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering, 2011 Vol.5 No.5/6, pp.457 - 462

Received: 11 Apr 2011
Accepted: 03 May 2011
Published online: 14 Oct 2014 *

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