Rolling contact fatigue of alumina ceramics sprayed on steel roller under pure rolling contact condition

The rolling contact fatigue of sprayed alumina ceramics with a nominal composition of Al₂O₃–2.3 mass% TiO₂ was studied with a two-roller test machine under a pure rolling contact condition with oil lubricant. The influence of undercoating of sprayed Ni-based alloy on the rolling contact fatigue was investigated. The failure mode of all sprayed rollers was spalling caused by subsurface cracking. The undercoating did not contribute to the improvement of the rolling contact fatigue life. The elastic modulus of the alumina sprayed layer evaluated with the nano-indentation method was around 85 GPa. The depths of the observed subsurface cracks corresponded approximately to the depths where the orthogonal shear stress or the maximum shear stress calculated with two-dimensional FEM became maximum.