Wear Rate and Entropy Generation Sources in a Ti6Al4V–WC/10Co Sliding Pair

Abstract

The potential of applying thermodynamics to study the tribological response of a tribological system is addressed in this paper. In order to do so, a model was developed to obtain the entropy flow generated by three different dissipative processes present in dry sliding, namely, thermal gradient, heat conduction, and abrasion. The flash and bulk temperatures at the contact interface were obtained with the aid of the finite element method (FEM), and pin-on-disk tests were performed by using titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V) disks and tungsten carbide (WC/10Co) pins. Then, the wear rate obtained from the tribological tests was correlated with the calculated entropy flow, and a degradation coefficient was associated to the sliding process. A linear dependence of the wear rate and the degradation coefficient was observed regardless of the variation of the points of operation of the system, so it is proposed that the coefficient of degradation used is inherent to the tribological system.