Volume 9, Issue 5, 2000

Quantitative Evaluation of Wear Grooves in a Fine Particulate Reinforced, Soft Polymer Coating System by Laser Profilometry and Computer Aided Scratch Analysis

Zoltan Neder¹, Karoly Varadi¹ and Klaus Friedrich²

¹Institute of Machine Design, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Muegyetem rkp. 3., H-1111 Budapest, Hungary

²Institute for Composite Materials Ltd. (IVW), University of Kaiserslautern, Erwin-Schrödinger str. Geb. 58,  D-67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

(Received 4/00; accepted 7/00)

ABSTRACT

After certain periods of practical application, particulate reinforced polymer coated surfaces frequently contain many grooves due to a scratching contact with any abrasive counterparts. To characterise these scratch patterns a software package (Scratch) has been developed using digitised surface roughness data from a laser profilometer. The Scratch system identifies individual scratches by representing their locations (using a slicing technique) and specifies scalar parameters (such as the specific scratch area or mid-tangent of the bearing area curve). In this way, the magnitude of the scratch damage can be identified following an approximate technique. This is demonstrated here for wear grooves in a polymer coating system subjected to a particular scratch test. But the method can also be applied to other engineering surfaces, e.g. for wear evaluation of composite bearings, seals and other sliding composite elements.