Investigation of Influence of Inclination on Friction and Wear Mechanisms in Piston Ring Cylinder Liner Contact With the New SRV^® 4 Test Rig

Due to the high demand for wear and friction tests in industry, caused by high costs of field tests, preceding experiments with a model test rig like the SRV^®3 test rig is common practice. With earlier SRV test rigs only horizontal movement of the test sample can be realized, thus effects of oil adhesion and wear particle removal can be significantly different to real applications. Using the new SRV^®4 [1] up to 90° inclination of the tribological interacting surfaces is possible. To isolate the effects of inclination on lubrication conditions and wear particle concentration, experiments with different parameters and samples have been made (e.g. piston ring cylinder liner contact). Diverse sample material, fresh oil and artificially aged oil were used. To investigate different oil conditions in the tribocontact selected experiments with and without oil circuit were made. The oil alterations during the model tests were determined by infrared spectroscopy (IR) and by inductive coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). The friction coefficient and the wear rate measured during the experiments and the surface topography of the samples measured by confocal microscopy after the test run showed strong dependence on inclination.