| Abstract: | The friction and wear behaviour of different steel/steel couples was investigated in laboratory tests with unlubricated reciprocating sliding motion. Two different steel balls were tested against two different steel discs in dry, normal, and moist air at room tem‐perature. The influence of normal force on friction and wear was studied in the range from 1 to 10 N for all three levels of relative humidity (RH). RH strongly influenced wear behaviour for all four couples, while the friction behaviour was less affected by RH. For all the couples, normal force was found to influence wear rate with a tendency for the wear rate to increase with decreasing normal force. The coefficient of friction also increased with decreasing normal force, but to a much lesser extent than that evaluated for the wear rate. |
