During service, the contact surfaces of adjustable-pitch propeller hubs are subject to alternating fretting wear and sliding wear as operational conditions change, significantly impairing equipment performance and service life. This paper presents a comparative study on the fretting and sliding wear characteristics and damage mechanisms of nickel-aluminum bronze (CuNiAl) alloys used in propeller hubs under dry friction conditions.
The core driving component of a tangential wear testing machine used in the test is voice coil motor, which can be used to carry out a high-frequency (>5 Hz) fretting wear test. Piezoelectric sensors are used to measure the friction force with high sensitivity and precision in real time. In this study, parameters of the fretting wear test are set as follows: displacement amplitude D=100 µm, movement frequency f =4 Hz; sliding wear test displacement amplitude D=400 µm, movement frequency f =1 Hz. The fretting and sliding wear properties under normal load of 5 N, 10 N and 15 N are explored. After the test, the dynamic behavior during the test is analyzed according to the change rule of friction coefficient. The micromorphology, formation mechanism and element distribution of fretting and sliding wear surfaces and wear chips of nickel-aluminum bronze are studied by a series of observation and analysis methods.
With the gradual increase in normal load, the fluctuation of the fretting friction coefficient becomes more pronounced compared with that of sliding friction. Both fretting and sliding friction coefficients exhibit a decreasing trend under increasing load. At low load, the friction coefficients for fretting and sliding are nearly equivalent, whereas at high load, the fretting friction coefficient becomes approximately 1.5 times higher than that of sliding. Notably, under fretting conditions, wear rate and dissipated energy demonstrate a strong positive correlation, where higher wear rates correspond to increased energy dissipation. In contrast, under sliding conditions, dissipated energy initially decreases before rising-a phenomenon likely associated with the evolution of surface microstructure and interaction mechanisms between frictional counterparts during sliding.
Compared with fretting wear, sliding wear maintains higher levels of dissipated energy and wear rates. Specifically, wear rates under fretting and sliding conditions increase by 54.7% and 81.3%, respectively, indicating that sliding wear is more sensitive to load variations. Furthermore, sliding friction generates significantly more wear debris, emphasizing the exacerbated surface degradation under such conditions. Morphological analysis reveals distinct debris characteristics: fretting wear predominantly produces black fine particles, fragments, and dark green fibrous debris, while sliding wear generates larger black-dominant fragments and fibrous residues. This divergence likely stems from severe surface spalling and plastic deformation during sliding, reflecting intensified material damage mechanisms under sustained sliding motion.
Under the combined influence of third-body behavior, dynamic response, and thermal effects at different displacement amplitudes, fretting and sliding exhibit fundamentally distinct friction characteristics, wear patterns, and surface damage mechanisms under identical load. Fretting wear manifests as spalling, ploughing grooves, delamination, and cracks, with its mechanisms dominated by fatigue wear, adhesive wear, and oxidative wear. In contrast, sliding wear primarily features ploughing grooves and scratches aligned with the sliding direction, where abrasive wear constitutes the predominant mechanism.
Key words
nickel-aluminum bronze /
fretting wear /
sliding wear /
wear mechanism /
comparative study
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Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (52475211); Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (2024AFB913); High-end Bearing Tribology Technology and Application of National and Local Joint Engineering Laboratory Open Fund (202404)
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