Study on Friction and Wear Properties of New Self-Lubricating Bearing Materials

Abstract

In this paper, friction and wear tests were carried out: 45# steel (carbon steel) was rubbed with aluminum bronze, aluminum bronze-based inlaid solid self-lubricating bearing (ISSLB) material, tin bronze, and tin bronze-based ISSLB material under different loads. The friction and wear properties (friction coefficient, wear amount and friction temperature) of the above four materials were studied. The friction and wear properties of the new self-lubricating bearing material and the traditional copper alloy under the same load were compared. The friction mechanism of each material in the friction process was discussed. The effect and mechanism of C-MoS2 composite solid lubricant on friction and wear properties were analyzed. Under the experimental loads of 100 to 500 N, the average friction coefficients of aluminum bronze-based ISSLB material were maintained in the range of 0.18~0.14, while the average friction coefficients of tin bronze-based ISSLB material were maintained between 0.26~0.20, which is much lower than those of copper alloy. The wear amounts of tin bronze-based ISSLB material were always in the range of 14.7~34.4 mg, which were much less than those of aluminum bronze-based ISSLB materials and copper alloy. The results show that the copper-based ISSLB materials possess excellent wear resistance, and the friction and wear properties of tin bronze-based ISSLB material are better than that of aluminum bronze-based ISSLB material. Therefore, if the copper-based ISSLB materials are applied to self-lubricating bearings, the friction and wear resistance of bearings will be greatly improved and the service life of bearings prolonged.