| Abstract: | Methods for testing the surface fatigue of materials or thin layers normally involve configurations with two or more rolling balls or discs. Such equipment and test specimens are quite complicated, and for a large number of experiments, costly. Testing could be considerably simplified if the stressing of the material surface were performed with a sliding natural diamond spherical segment. A diamond on steel (or any different material) friction pair has the particular attribute that sliding wear is absent. Under these circumstances, after a certain number of strain cycles, fatigue failure of the investigated surface or layers appears. A particularly relevant application is investigation of the adhesion of a DLC layer. |
