Experimental Investigation of the Effect of System Rigidity on Wear and Friction-Induced Vibrations

Abstract

This paper presents experimental data and a physical model of the effects of normal load and system rigidity on the friction and wear processes with water lubrication. The transition from mild to severe friction and wear was found to be independent of the system rigidity, but dependent on the normal load. As the normal load is increased further, it reaches another critical value, which depends on the system rigidity, at which high frequency self-excited vibrations are generated. These oscillations exhibit a coupling between the frictional and normal degrees of freedom. It is shown that mild wear rate increases with the normal load and also with the system rigidity.