Study of Temperature and Wear Variations of Aluminium in General Dry Sliding Contact

The present research focuses on the study of temperature and wear variations of aluminium in general dry sliding contact conditions. The main aim of this research is to develop a simulation methodology in order to calculate temperature and wear variations of different materials (here: aluminium on cast iron) in general dry sliding contacts. The developed simulation methodology is based on an uncoupled thermo-mechanical and wear analysis. The widely spread finite element software Abaqus is used for the numerical investigations. For calibration and validation, experimental investigations are performed with a pin-on-disc test bench. A comparison between the experimental and the numerical results is presented and discussed. The experimental results are in close agreement with the numerical results. For the considered test case (rotational velocity of the disc=300 rpm and load on the pin=110 N) the numerical analysis predicts a maximum temperature of 63°C in comparison to 65°C in the experiment. For the considered test case (rotational velocity of the disc=600 rpm and load on the pin=150 N) the simulation predicts a maximum temperature of 93°C in comparison to 97°C in the experiment. The study concludes that the developed simulation methodology is accurate and can be used to calculate temperature and wear variations of different materials in general dry sliding contact.