Wear 225229 1999.

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Transitions between two-body and three-body abrasive wear: influence of test conditions in the microscale abrasive wear test
R.I. Trezona ) , D.N. Allsopp, I.M. Hutchings
Uniersity of Cambridge, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, Pembroke Street, Cambridge, CB2 3QZ, UK

Abstract The microscale abrasive wear test also known as the ball-cratering wear test. is generally considered to be a three-body wear test. Nevertheless, different test conditions can produce either two-body grooving. or three-body rolling. wear mechanisms. The wear mechanisms and wear rates were investigated over a range of loads 0.1 to 5.0 N., slurry concentrations 0.000031 to 0.24 volume fraction abrasive. and abrasive materials SiC, Al 2 O 3 and diamond.. It was found that for each abrasive, a transition from grooving to rolling wear could be identified with a critical ratio of load to slurry concentration. The wear rate varied with concentration, with a maximum at intermediate slurry concentrations. The classification of abrasive wear into two-body and three-body mechanisms is discussed with reference to the problems noted by Gates wJ.D. Gates, Two-body and three-body abrasion: a critical discussion, Wear 215 1998. 139146x. q 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Abrasive wear; Grooving wear; Rolling wear; Ball-cratering

1. Introduction The ball-cratering microscale abrasive wear test w1,2x is an example of a test method which produces an imposed wear scar geometry w3x. In this method, a sphere of radius R is rotated against a specimen in the presence of a slurry of fine abrasive particles. The geometry of the wear scar is assumed to reproduce the spherical geometry of the ball, and the wear volume may then be calculated by measurement of either the crater diameter or its depth. For homogenous bulk materials, the wear volume, V , can be related to the total distance of sliding, S, and the normal load on the contact, N, by a simple model for abrasive wear w4x which is equivalent to the Archard equation for sliding wear: V s k SN
3

For a wear scar of spherical geometry in an initially plane specimen, the wear volume may be calculated from the crater dimensions i.e., surface chordal diameter b or depth h.:

Vf

p b4
64 R

for b < R for h < R

2a . 2b .

V f p h2 R

1.

where k is the wear coefficient with units m N m.y1 ; the abrasive wear resistance is defined as ky1 and has units N m. my3 . The usefulness of k as a measure of the abrasive wear response of the material is thus limited to situations in which the wear volume is directly proportional to both the load and sliding distance.

Corresponding author. rit1001@cus.cam.ac.uk

Fax:

q 44-1223334567;

e-m ail:

The method may be extended to coated systems, and the wear coefficients of both the coating and substrate may be determined from a single test w1,5x. The method may also be extended to specimen surfaces with compound curvature using suitable expressions for the wear volume w6x. Several variants of the experimental apparatus exist, which can be divided into two categories: free ball machines, in which the ball is driven by friction from a drive shaft against which it rests, and in which the load applied to the sample is essentially due to the weight of the ball w1,2x; and fixed ball machines, in which the ball is driven positively for example, by being clamped between coaxial rotating shafts. and the sample is loaded against the ball with the desired normal force by a lever arm arrangement.

0043-1648r99r$ - see front matter q 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 4 3 - 1 6 4 8 9 8 . 0 0 3 5 8 - 5

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Published results from this test, and from the essentially similar dimple-grinder test w5x, have used abrasive slurries of SiC at 0.75 g cmy3 w1x, diamond at approximately 0.01 g cmy3 w7x, or diamond of unspecified standard concentration w5x. Loads of between 0.05 and 0.35 N have been used w1,2,5,7,8x. There is clearly a wide range of test conditions in use, but to date there has been no systematic report of the effect of slurry concentration and composition, or of normal load. Published micrographs of the wear crater topography show that the wear mechanisms for the dilute diamond slurries are predominantly two-body parallel grooving, whereas the mechanisms seen with the more concentrated SiC slurries are predominantly associated with three-body wear by rolling particles, with no apparent directionality to the topography w1,2,5,7,8x. A study was therefore carried out into the effects of slurry concentration, abrasive material and applied normal load on the mechanism and rate of wear in the microscale abrasive wear test.

2. Experimental methods Tests were performed with two different fixed-ball machines. The first was constructed in this laboratory and allows continuous measurement of the depth of the wear scar during the test, without requiring it to be interrupted. This machine was used for mapping the wear mechanisms and investigating the effect of slurry concentration. The apparatus is shown schematically in Fig. 1a.. The ball is driven positively by a shaft, and the sample is held horizontally beneath the ball, pressed upwards against it by a lever arm with dead weight loading. The wear depth was logged and plotted by computer, and observed continually during the test to confirm the smooth progress of wear. However, the final wear volume was determined from measurements of the scar diameter by optical microscopy, and in some cases also by optical profilometry. The wear volume was calculated from the measured crater diameter via Eq. 2a.. The other instrument is a commercial Plint TE-66 microscale abrasion tester which allows more accurate control of the normal load to an accuracy of "0.01 N. and is illustrated schematically in Fig. 1b.. The ball is driven positively by a shaft. The sample is mounted vertically on a pivoted L-shaped arm and is loaded against the ball by a dead weight hanging from the horizontal lever. The wear volume was calculated from the diameter of the wear scar via Eq. 2a.. This method was used to investigate the effects of both total sliding distance and normal load on the wear volume. For the sliding distance experiments, sequential tests at a range of sliding distances were carried out at different locations on the specimen.

Fig. 1. The two microscale abrasion test machines employed in this work.

Hard martensitic steel bearing balls were used, 25.40 mm in diameter, with a hardness of 990 " 40 HV. The balls were treated before use to produce fine surface pitting. This modification has been shown to be necessary in order to achieve consistent results on materials softer than the ball, as the pits aid in the entrainment of the abrasive into the contact w9x. All tests were performed on tool steel specimens 1.0 wt.% C; 1.2 wt.% Mn: 0.2 wt.% Si: 0.5 wt.% Cr; 0.15 wt.% V; 0.5 wt.% W., quenched and tempered to a hardness of 775 " 10 HV, then ground and polished by conventional metallographic methods. Abrasive slurries of SiC, Al 2 O 3 and diamond particles suspended in distilled water were used, at various concentrations between 0.0001 and 1.0 g of abrasive per cubic centimetre of water. The SiC and Al 2 O 3 abrasives were grade F1200, with mean particle sizes of 4.25 and 4.97 m m, respectively, and the diamond abrasive had a mean particle size of 3.05 m m, all determined by laser granulometry. The slurries were agitated continuously throughout each test to prevent settling of the abrasive particles. All tests were performed with a sliding speed of 0.05 m sy1 and total sliding distances of 15 to 75 m. The slurries were fed on to the top of the ball throughout the test at a rate of approximately 0.25 cm3 miny1 . A range of normal loads from 0.1 to 5.0 N was used.

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Fig. 2. SEM image of the worn surface of a quenched and tempered tool steel produced by microscale abrasion at a normal load of 0.25 N with a 0.0009 volume fraction 0.003 g cmy3 . 3 m m diamond slurry. This surface is typical of those produced at high loads and low slurry concentrations.

The worn samples were examined by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and optical profilometry. 3. Results 3.1. Wear mechanism transitions A two-body grooving wear mechanism was found to be dominant at high loads andror low slurry concentrations

for all abrasives tested. This process occurs in the microscale abrasion test when a significant proportion of the particles embed in the surface of the ball bearing and act as fixed indenters, producing a series of fine parallel grooves in the specimen surface. Examination of such wear scars by SEM Fig. 2. indicates that the grooves are steep-sided and correspond well in size with the abrasive particles. This suggests that the grooves are formed by the abrasive particles and not by asperities on the surface of the ball. The dominant mechanism at low loads andror

Fig. 3. SEM image of the worn surface of quenched and tempered tool steel produced by microscale abrasion at a normal load of 0.25 N with a 0.237 volume fraction 1.0 g cmy3 . F1200 SiC slurry. This surface is typical of those produced at low loads and high slurry concentrations.

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Fig. 4. Wear mechanism map for ball crater microscale abrasion of tool steel by F1200 SiC slurry.

Fig. 6. Wear mechanism map for ball crater microscale abrasion of tool steel by 3 m m diamond slurry.

high slurry concentrations was a three-body process, in which the abrasive particles do not embed, but roll between the two surfaces producing a heavily deformed, multiply indented wear surface with no evident surface directionality. A scanning electron micrograph of a typical three-body wear surface formed in the tool steel is shown in Fig. 3. At intermediate loads andror slurry concentrations some of the wear scars displayed a mixed character, with two-body grooving in the centre and three-body rolling at the sides. Wear mechanism maps, in terms of the applied load and slurry concentration for SiC, Al 2 O 3 and diamond, are shown in Figs. 46. The transition between two-body grooving and three-body rolling was found to occur at an approximately constant ratio of load to volume fraction for the SiC and Al 2 O 3 abrasives for loads up to 1.0 N; the ratio loadrvolume fraction was approximately 7 for SiC and approximately 5 for the Al 2 O 3 . For the diamond abrasive, there was a much wider variation in this ratio, although the average value was also approximately 5. 3.2. Wear olumes The variation of wear volume with slurry concentration was studied for the SiC abrasive and is shown in Fig. 7. It was nonlinear, exhibiting a maximum in wear volume at 0.10.2 g cmy3 volume fraction 0.030.06. for the loads

studied. At low slurry concentrations the wear volume was almost independent of load, depending predominantly on slurry concentration. The effect of the total sliding distance on the volume of wear was investigated for both mechanisms by using very low volume fraction s 0.015. and very high volume fraction s 0.189. F1200 SiC slurries to ensure two-body grooving and three-body rolling respectively. The results are plotted in Figs. 8 and 9. The total wear volume was found to be directly proportional to the sliding distance, in agreement with the prediction of Eq. 1.. The effect of the normal load on the wear volume per unit sliding distance was also studied for both three-body rolling and two-body grooving mechanisms, by using the same high volume fraction s 0.189. and low volume fraction s 0.015. SiC slurry concentrations to try and ensure that the mechanism stayed the same over the complete range of loads employed. A much greater range of loads was investigated for three-body rolling wear than for twobody grooving wear, because it was not possible to obtain well-formed spherical craters for loads greater than 0.5 N under the conditions used to ensure grooving wear conditions. A mechanism by which slurry is not fully entrained into the wear contact but instead flows round the sides has been described previously w9x. This mechanism leads to

Fig. 5. Wear mechanism map for ball crater microscale abrasion of tool steel by F1200 alumina slurry.

Fig. 7. Variation of wear volume after 30 m sliding with slurry concentration and applied load in the microscale abrasion test; F1200 SiC abrasive slurry against tool steel.

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Fig. 8. Variation of wear volume with sliding distance for three-body rolling abrasion; 0.189 volume fraction 0.75 g cmy3 . F1200 SiC abrasive slurry against tool steel at a load of 0.25 N.

Fig. 10. Variation of wear volume per unit sliding distance with normal load for three-body rolling abrasion; 0.189 volume fraction 0.75 g cmy3 . F1200 SiC abrasive slurry against tool steel; various sliding distances from 12 to 24 m.

nonspherical wear scars, characterised by a ridge of specimen material in the centre of the scar, parallel to the sliding direction. Such ridges were present in all the two-body grooving wear scars produced at loads of over 0.5 N, and also in some produced at lower loads as indicated in Fig. 11.. Fig. 10 shows the wear volume per unit sliding distance as a function of normal load for the higher slurry concentration. Despite the use of a concentrated slurry, the wear scar produced at a normal load of 5 N displayed a surface topography characteristic of the two-body grooving wear mechanism and was also generally nonspherical, with a ridge of specimen material in the centre of the scar. The wear scar at 3 N was spherical in general form and its wear surface was mainly characteristic of three-body rolling, but it displayed some evidence of two-body grooving. However, under all the other loads employed at this slurry concentration, the dominant wear mechanism was three-body rolling. These data suggest that the wear volume per unit sliding distance VrS . is directly proportional to the normal load N . for three-body rolling abrasion in agreement with Eq. 1.. Fig. 11 is a plot of the wear volume per unit sliding distance as a function of normal load for the lower slurry concentration volume fraction s 0.015.. All the wear scars displayed a two-body grooving wear surface, although

some were ridged and nonspherical; these have been plotted as a different data set. The variation of the wear volume of the spherical two-body grooving scars with load appears to be nonlinear, in disagreement with the predictions of Eq. 1., and is better described by a power law function with an exponent of load of 0.62 than by a linear fit. There is no clear relationship between normal load and wear volume per unit sliding distance for the ridged wear scars.

4. Discussion 4.1. Wear mechanism transitions The dependence of the wear mechanism on load and abrasive concentration can be explained by an adaptation of an existing model; Williams and Hyncica w10x showed that an abrasive particle between two surface undergoes a transition from grooving to rolling at a critical value of Drh where D is the particle major axis and h is the separation of the surfaces Fig. 12.. In their work, the surface separation h was determined by hydrodynamic lubrication conditions; in the present case, the surfaces are

Fig. 9. Variation of wear volume with sliding distance for two-body grooving abrasion; 0.015 volume fraction 0.05 g cmy3 . F1200 SiC abrasive slurry against tool steel at a load of 0.10 N.

Fig. 11. Variation of wear volume per unit sliding distance with normal load for two-body grooving abrasion; 0.015 volume fraction 0.05 g cmy3 . F1200 SiC abrasive slurry against tool steel; constant sliding distance of 32 m.

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Fig. 12. The geometry of a single abrasive particle is described by parameters D and b , after Williams and Hyncica w10x.

of Drh, and therefore of the expression above, depends on the particle shape as defined by the angle b w10x.. We therefore expect different transition values for different abrasive particle sizes and shapes. The model is consistent with the results reported in this study: a transition in wear mechanism is observed as the volume fraction of abrasive or the normal load, and hence the load per particle, is changed; and the transition value is dependent on the abrasive used. The effects of particle size and surface hardness have yet to be fully investigated. 4.2. Wear olumes A large and nonlinear variation in the wear rate was observed as the slurry concentration was changed Fig. 7.; test results using different slurry concentrations are therefore not directly comparable. The rate of change of wear rate was greatest for high loads at abrasive volume fractions above approximately 0.003 0.01 g cmy3 .. At very low slurry concentrations, the wear volume is seen to be almost independent of load, contrary to the linear dependence of Eq. 1.. This is to be expected, as one of the assumptions in the derivation of the equation is that an increase in load causes the particle to embed more deeply. Clearly, assuming that the particles do not fracture, there must come a point where each particle is fully embedded, and any additional load must be supported by a hydrodynamic film andror by asperities on the surface itself. An increase in load will therefore not increase the volume of material removed by abrasion; the wear coefficient can only be increased by increasing the number of particles in the contact, by raising the slurry concentration. 4.2.1. Sliding distance Any simple model for the volume of material removed by abrasive action will predict that the wear volume should be directly proportional to the total distance that the two surfaces have slid over each other Eq. 1.., i.e., that the wear volume per unit sliding distance does not change. However, in the case of the microscale abrasion test and other wear tests in which the size of the wear contact increases with sliding distance, it is not at all obvious that the wear volume per unit sliding distance should necessarily remain constant w3x. During a microscale abrasion test, the area of the wear contact is continually increasing and consequently, the nominal pressure on the contact is continually decreasing. This means that, assuming the concentration of the slurry in the contact does not change, the load per abrasive particle decreases as the wear volume increases Eq. 4... Even if the slurry concentration in the contact does change, it is still likely that the load per particle will vary in some way with wear volume. Thus, in order for the wear volume per unit sliding distance to be independent of the sliding

not supported by a significant hydrodynamic pressure, and so the separation is determined by the load and by the number of particles within the contact, or equivalently, the load per particle. If the contact contains many particles under a low load, each particle will indent the surfaces only lightly, and so Drh f 1. For a typical angular particle geometry b s 558. the critical ratio is 1.74 w10x, and so at low loads, rolling wear is produced. If the contact contains a few heavily loaded particles they will indent the surface more deeply, making Drh ) 1.74, and grooving wear results. Let us assume that the surfaces are of equal hardness, with HA s H B s H. Then the indentation depths of the particle will also be equal; a s b. The particle hardness is assumed to be large compared with the surface hardness. At the transition, the inclination of the particle tends to 908 w10x, so h f D y 2 a. For a pyramidal indentation, for instance a Vickers indentation, the surface diagonal length d is proportional to the depth a; and the hardness is defined by HA P d2

3.

where p is the load on the indenter, i.e., the mean load per particle. It can readily be shown that p depends on the total load N, the projected area of the wear contact A, and the volume fraction of abrasive , in the following way: pA ND 2 A

4.

Therefore h s D y B prH where B is a constant for a given indenter geometry. At the transition Drh is constant, and D h s 1y

'

B D

( /
H

y1

5.

Therefore BrD . prH is expected to have a constant value at the transition between wear mechanisms. This model predicts that the wear mechanism will depend upon the load per particle p, the length of the major axis of the particle D, the hardness of the surfaces H , and the constant B, which may be interpreted as a geometry factor dependent on the particle shape. The critical value

'

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distance, it must also be independent of the load per abrasive particle. Independence of the wear rate on load per particle is indeed a feature of Rabinowiczs derivation of Eq. 1. w4x. In this approach, both the load per particle, and the cross-sectional area of the groove in the wearing surface created by each particle, depend directly on the number of particles in the contact. Thus, for higher load per particle values, there must be fewer particles, each of which removes a larger cross-sectional area volume of material so that the total volume of material removed is the same. However, the results plotted in Fig. 7 suggest that, for microscale abrasion, the load per particle does have an effect on the wear rate; there is significant variation in the wear volume as the slurry concentration changes. The only way in which the slurry concentration can affect the wear process is by altering the actual concentration of abrasive in the wear contact. This is significant because it had previously been suggested that the actual concentration of abrasive in the wear contact was independent of the slurry concentration w1x. As the slurry concentration and thus the load per abrasive particle has been shown to affect the wear rate in the microscale abrasion test Fig. 7., the wear volume per unit sliding distance would not be expected be independent of sliding distance. Figs. 8 and 9 show the variation of wear volume with sliding distance for a 0.189 volume fraction 0.75 g cmy3 . SiC slurry at 0.25 N and a 0.015 volume fraction 0.05 g cmy3 . SiC slurry at 0.10 N, producing three-body rolling and two-body grooving conditions respectively. It is surprising to see that the wear volume per unit sliding distance does, in fact, remain remarkably constant. However, an explanation for this apparent contradiction can be offered by further reference to Fig. 7. The variation of wear volume with slurry volume fraction is smaller for lower loads, only changing by a factor of about 3 over the complete range of concentrations for a load of 0.25 N; an even smaller variation would be expected for 0.1 N. For the three-body rolling regime of the 0.25 N plot, the crater volume changes by a factor of about 2 with a change in volume fraction of abrasive by a factor of 15. For the two-body grooving regime, the wear volume changes by a factor of 3, for a change in volume fraction of abrasive by a factor of 1000. Since the load per particle is inversely proportional to the volume fraction of abrasive in the slurry Eq. 4.., it follows that although the wear rate does depend on the load per particle, it is not very sensitive to it, especially at lower loads, and plots of wear volume against sliding distance may well be expected to appear linear if the range of wear volumes involved is relatively small since the projected area of the contact is proportional to the square root of the wear volume for these shallow scars.. For instance, for three-body rolling behaviour in Fig. 8, the wear volume changes only by a factor of 4, so the contact area and thus the load per particle change only by a factor

of 2 Eq. 4... For the two-body grooving case shown in Fig. 9, the contact area also changes only by a factor of about 2. 4.2.2. Normal load Eq. 1. also predicts that abrasive wear volume should be directly proportional to the load on the wear contact. The data presented in Figs. 10 and 11 suggest that volume is proportional to load for three-body rolling but that for two-body grooving, wear volume is proportional to a power of load lower than one. It is interesting to note, however, that the linear trendline through the data for three-body rolling in Fig. 10 does not pass through the origin of the plot. There is also a slight discontinuity between the values at 0.75 N and 1.0 N. The linear section of Fig. 10 has been replotted in Fig. 13 to indicate the sliding distance at which each test was conducted. It does appear that there is a slight discontinuity, not just between 0.75 N and 1.0 N, but also at every point at which the sliding distance was changed. This is what might be expected since the wear volume per unit sliding distance is weakly dependent on the sliding distance as discussed above. Another important feature of the results plotted in Fig. 10 is that at 5 N load the wear mechanism was two-body grooving rather than three-body rolling, and that at 3 N the wear scar displayed a mixed character. This confirms that a transition between the two mechanisms will occur even at very high slurry concentrations 0.189 volume fraction. if a sufficiently high load is used. It has been shown in Fig. 7 that for two-body grooving wear with slurries of very low abrasive volume fraction below 0.003. the wear volume is almost independent of the normal load. This has been explained by total embedding of the abrasive particles when there are very few of them in the contact. For three-body rolling abrasion, the volume does appear to be proportional to the load. However, there is a transitional two-body grooving regime in which the applied load has some effect on the wear volume, but is not directly proportional to it. For SiC

Fig. 13. Variation of wear volume per unit sliding distance with normal load for three-body rolling abrasion; the sliding distance at which each set of tests was carried out has been included; 0.189 volume fraction 0.75 g cmy3 . F1200 SiC abrasive slurry against tool steel.

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slurries this regime lies between 0.003 and 0.030 volume fraction. It can be seen from Fig. 11 that at an abrasive volume fraction of 0.015 the wear volume is proportional to load to the power of about 0.6. In terms of the Rabinowicz derivation of Eq. 1., the increase in load has caused the particles to embed more deeply, but the corresponding increase in material removal is not as great as would be expected. This may be because at such a relatively low abrasive volume fraction, the particles are being embedded deeply enough so that they no longer behave as the geometrically self-similar indenters assumed in the derivation of the equation. 4.2.3. Ridged wear scars Under the conditions used to investigate the effect of load for two-body grooving abrasion, the wear scars often did not form properly, displaying a ridged topography. The formation of these ridges has been discussed before w9x and it was concluded that they are a feature of the entrainment of abrasive into the wear contact. It was shown that tendency for ridge formation depends on the hardness of the specimen material and the surface condition of the ball. In the present work it has been shown that ridge formation is also more likely at higher loads and lower slurry concentrations Figs. 10 and 11.. It has previously been established w9x that a ridge will form if abrasive cannot get into the wear contact at the start of the test. This explains why ridges are likely to form for a higher applied load and lower slurry concentration as both these effects will make it more difficult for slurry to be entrained at the start of the test. 4.3. Classification of abrasion The classification of abrasive wear into the categories two-body abrasion and three-body abrasion is widely used w11x and will be familiar to most readers. The origin of these terms comes from the application of systems analysis to abrasion w12,13x. The systems analysis approach seeks to break down a phenomenon into a list of inputs and outputs. The process by which the inputs are transformed into the outputs is treated, initially, as a black box. Thus, for two-body abrasion the inputs are the two surfaces that interact: the first body, which is the body whose wear is of the most concern, and the second body, a counterface which is in motion relative to the first body and in direct or indirect contact with it such that forces may be transmitted between the two bodies. In three-body abrasion, the inputs are the two surfaces, the first and second bodies as described before, and a third body which comprises any solid materials, entirely separate from the first two bodies, which might be present at the interface between the first and second bodies. It can readily be seen that according to the original, systems analysis definition, microscale abrasion with an abrasive slurry is a three-body

abrasion process irrespective of the experimental conditions employed. However, the current dominant interpretation of the difference between two- and three-body abrasion differs from the original distinction derived from systems analysis w11x. In this dominant view, two-body abrasion is a process in which particles or asperities are rigidly attached to the second body whereas in three-body abrasion, the abrasive particles are loose and free to roll. Two-body abrasion conditions are expected to produce higher wear rates than three-body conditions because the contact between the abrasive particle and the wearing surface is sliding rather than rolling. Under this classification, microscale abrasion is considered to be a two-body abrasion process under conditions in which the abrasive becomes embedded in the counterface and a three-body abrasion process when the abrasive particles do not embed and are able to roll between the two surfaces. Clearly, there is a discrepancy between the interpretation obtained from the literal, systems analysis approach and the interpretation most commonly used. In a recent paper, Gates w11x cites several more examples where the application of the current dominant interpretation leads to inconsistencies. For example, a shovel digging into a pile of loose rock is considered as a three-body interaction even though there is no separate counterface present as a second body. The dry sandrrubber wheel abrasion test DSRWAT. w14x is considered to produce three-body abrasion. However, in this test, particles are, to some extent, gripped by the rubber and may not be free to rotate, producing unexpectedly high wear rates for three-body abrasion. Also, the case of free-flowing sand or gravel sliding down a chute is often regarded as two-body even though the particles may be rolling and the wear rates can be very low. These difficulties arise from the use of the terms twoand three-body to distinguish between situations in which the abrasive particles are fixed to the counterface, producing grooves, or free, so that they roll between the two surfaces, irrespective of the actual number of bodies involved. The terms two-body abrasion and three-body abrasion would be better used in their original, systems analysis sense to describe the number of different inputs in an abrasion situation. The current dominant usage of these terms, however, is mechanistic, describing the behaviour of the particles in the wear contact, rather than situationbased. It is thus the opinion of the current authors that new terms should be adopted that describe the behaviour of the abrasive particles. Abrasive wear processes in which the particles are fixed to the counterface would be described as grooving abrasive wear and abrasive wear processes in which the abrasive is able to roll between the two surfaces would be described as rolling abrasive wear. However, it is possible for abrasive particles to slide over a surface producing grooves even if they are not held by a counter-

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face gravel sliding down a chute, for instance. so the following more complete definitions are suggested: Grooing abrasie wear An abrasive wear process in which effectively the same region of the abrasive particle or asperity is in contact with the wearing surface throughout the process. Wear surfaces produced by grooving abrasion are characterised by grooves parallel to the direction of sliding. Rolling abrasie wear An abrasive wear process in which the region of the abrasive particle in contact with the wearing surface is continually changing. Wear surfaces produced by rolling abrasion are characterised by a heavily deformed, multiply indented appearance and little or no directionality. In many abrasive wear situations it is likely that careful examination of the wear surface would be required in order to determine whether grooving wear or rolling wear is occurring; in this sense, the classification scheme outlined above is at a disadvantage with respect to alternatives based on the severity of the wear w11x since a change in wear severity is more readily identifiable to an engineer without specialist equipment. However, the classification of abrasive wear into grooving wear and rolling wear has the key advantage of being a direct reference to the wear process rather than either the situation that causes that process or its secondary manifestations. In the microscale abrasion work presented in this paper, it has been shown in Figs. 46 that relatively small changes in test conditions in this case, load and slurry concentration. can lead to transitions between grooving wear and rolling wear. There are a range of conditions, near the transition between wear processes, for which it would not be possible, just from knowledge of the wear situation, to determine how the wear was occurring. Also, because grooving wear occurs at lower slurry concentrations in microscale abrasion, the wear rate, or wear severity, associated with grooving wear, is not necessarily any higher than that produced by rolling abrasion Fig. 7. and it is thus not always possible to determine how the wear is occurring just by reference to the severity of wear. 5. Conclusions 1. In the microscale abrasion test, both two-body grooving and three-body rolling mechanisms can be produced in a nominally three-body situation, by varying the parameters of normal load, volume fraction of abrasive in the slurry, and abrasive type. 2. The operating wear mechanism has been mapped for a range of normal loads and volume fractions, for three different abrasives; the grooving mechanism dominated at high loads and low abrasive volume fractions and the rolling mechanism dominated at low loads and high abrasive volume fractions.

3. The transition between the two wear mechanisms occurs at an approximately constant ratio of normal load to slurry volume fraction for the SiC and Al 2 O 3 abrasives, while for the diamond abrasive there was a wider variation in the ratio, but a similar mean value. The exact value of this ratio at the transition depends on the abrasive used. An existing model for abrasive wear has been adapted to describe the wear situation encountered in the microscale abrasion test. This model is able to account for the wear mechanism transition and its dependence on the load, abrasive volume fraction and abrasive type. 4. The wear rate in this test varies with abrasive volume fraction in a nonlinear way, with the most severe wear at intermediate concentrations. At low volume fractions the wear rate is influenced predominantly by the slurry concentration; the normal load is a much weaker factor than at high slurry volume fractions. 5. For the rolling wear mechanism, the wear volume is proportional to the normal load, in accordance with the classical Archard wear equation 1.. For the grooving wear mechanism, the wear volume is proportional to some power of load lower than one. 6. The wear rate in this test is found in practice to be almost constant with sliding distance, in accordance with the classical Archard wear equation 1., for both grooving and rolling wear mechanisms, despite the change in contact conditions during the test. This is thought to be because the wear rate is not highly sensitive to the load per particle. 7. The consequence for microscale abrasive wear testing is that values of the wear coefficient are only directly comparable if obtained under the same conditions of abrasive type and abrasive volume fraction. Values obtained at different loads, but with identical slurries are comparable only for the rolling wear mechanism. Values obtained at different sliding distances but otherwise identical conditions are likely to be comparable for both wear mechanisms. 8. It is suggested that the terms grooving abrasive wear and rolling abrasive wear should be adopted for the description of abrasive wear mechanisms, to produce an entirely unambiguous replacement for the terms twobody abrasive wear and three-body abrasive wear, due to the contradictory interpretations of the latter terms in the literature.

Acknowledgements This work was supported via the CASE studentship scheme by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, MultiArc UK. and the Ford Motor Company. We would also like to acknowledge the work of Keith Rutherford and Gary Chapman in the design and construction of the depth-sensing microscale abrasion apparatus.

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R.I. Trezona et al. r Wear 225229 (1999) 205214 w8x M.H. Staia, C. Enriquez, E.S. Puchi, D.B. Lewis, M. Jeandin, Application of ball cratering method to study abrasive wear, Surf. Eng. 14 1. 1998. 4954. w9x D.N. Allsopp, R.I. Trezona, I.M. Hutchings, The effects of ball surface condition in the micro-scale abrasive wear test, submitted for publication to Tribol. Lett. 1998.. w10x J.A. Williams, A.M. Hyncica, Abrasive wear in lubricated contacts, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 25 1992. A81A90. w11x J.D. Gates, Two-body and three-body abrasion: a critical discussion, Wear 215 1998. 139146. w12x H. Czichos, Tribology: A Systems Approach to the Science and Technology of Friction, Lubrication and Wear, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1978, pp. 112114. w13x K.H. Zum Gahr, A review of the abrasive wear of metals, J. Eng. Mater. Technol. Trans. ASME. 104 1982. 8084. w14x ASTM G65-94, Standard test method for measuring abrasion using the dry sandrrubber wheel apparatus, in: Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Vol. 03.02, Amer. Soc. Testing Mater., Philadelphia, 1995.

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