Wear of steel plate was measured during unlubricated sliding against TiC composites. These composites consist of round TiC grains and steel matrix. TiC grain itself exhibits low surface roughness and round shape, which does not bring its counterpart into severe damage from friction. In our work a classical experimental design was applied to find out a dominant factor in counterpart wear. The analysis of the data showed that only the applied load has a significant effect on the counterpart wear. Wear rate of counterpart increased non-linearly with applied load. Amount of wear was discrepant from expectation of being in proportion to the load by analogy with friction force. Our experimental result from treating matrix variously revealed bimodal wear behavior between the composites and counterpart where a mode seems to result from the special lubricant characteristic of TiC grains, and the other is caused by metal-to-metal contact. The two wear mechanisms were discussed.

• 이정근 | Lee Jeong-Keun