The effect of sliding speed and amount of loading on friction and wear behavior of Cu–0.65 wt.%Cr alloy

Friction and wear behavior of a peak aged Cu–0.65 wt.%Cr alloy was investigated. The friction and wear experiments were run under ambient conditions with a pin-on-disk tribometer. Experiments were performed using various applied normal loads and sliding velocities. The tribological behavior of the studied alloy was discussed in terms of friction coefficient, wear loss and wear mechanism.Friction coefficient and wear loss have shown large sensitivity to the applied normal load and the sliding velocity. At the sliding velocity of 0.3 m/s weight loss increased from 6.9 to 51 mg by increasing the normal load from 20 to 40 N. At higher sliding velocity minimum weight loss is achieved at 60 N normal load. So it can be seen that with increasing normal load wear rate decreases due to the formation of a continuous tribofilm which consists of Fe–Cu intermetallic. Varying of friction coefficients in different conditions of normal load and sliding velocity is correlated to the wear behavior.The analysis of worn surfaces by XRD and SEM showed that an increase in normal load and sliding velocity creates an intermetallic wear-induced layer, which modifies the wear behavior of the alloy. The XRD result indicates that new phase of Cu_9.9Fe_0.1 is generated on worn surfaces of the pin specimens during the wear tests. There is a significant correlation between the micrograph of worn surfaces and the wear rate of specimens.