Search results

The purpose of this paper is to systematically study the dynamic contact stress, frictional heat and temperature field of femoral head-on-acetabular cup contact pairs in a gait cycle.

In this paper, four common femoral head-on-acetabular cup contact pairs are used as the research objects, mathematical calculations and finite element simulations are adopted. The contact model of hip joint head and acetabular cup was established by finite element simulation to analyze the stress and temperature distribution of the contact interface.

The results show that the contact stress of the head-on-cup interface is inversely proportional to the contact area; high contact stress directly leads to greater frictional heat. However, hip joints with metal-on-polyethylene or ceramic-on-polyethylene paired interfaces have lower frictional heat and show a significant temperature rise in one gait cycle, which may be related to the material properties of the acetabular cup.

Previous studies about calculating the interface frictional heat always ignore the dynamic change process in the contact load and the contact area. This study considered the dynamic changes of the contact stress and area of the femoral head-on-acetabular cup interface, and four common contact pairs were systematically analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to find the variations of brake lining's frictional performance with braking conditions, and their influence on the braking safety and reliability of automobiles.

As the semimetal brake lining is widely used currently in automobiles, it was selected as the experimental material. By simulating the braking conditions and environment of automobiles, some tribological experiments of the brake lining were investigated on the X‐DM friction tester, when it is paired with the friction disc made of gray cast iron. The influence of braking pressure, sliding velocity and surface temperature on the friction coefficient and its stability coefficient were studied in depth through experiments.

The friction coefficient decreases gradually with the increasing of braking pressure and sliding velocity when the surface temperature is naturally rising. It rises first then falls with the surface temperature rising and the maximal value appears at nearly 200°C. The stability of friction coefficient decreases obviously when the sliding velocity exceeds 30 m/s, the braking pressure exceeds 1.8 MPa and the surface temperature is over 200°C. Based on the experimental results, the authors consider that it is not reliable to execute an emergency braking only by rising the braking pressure when the automobile is driving with a high velocity. In order to reduce the bad influence of high temperature on frictional performance, some effective actions should be taken for cooling the friction disc. What is more, special attention should be paid to the decreasing of frictional stability during the braking with high velocity, pressure and temperature.

This paper studies the influence of braking conditions on friction coefficient and its stability of the semimetal brake lining for automobiles. It is believed that this research may have some actual guidance for enhancing the braking safety and reliability of automobiles.

The aim of this paper is to characterize some selected formulations based on castor oil and a variety of biogenic thickeners from a tribological point of view and compare them with some traditional lithium greases.

The evolution of the friction coefficient in several tribological tests performed using several ball‐on‐disc configurations and coupling materials was monitored for the different oleogels proposed as biodegradable lubricating greases. Both a rotational ball‐on‐disc classical tribometer designed at MuT laboratory and a nanotribometer were used in rotational and oscillatory modes.

Generally, the use of castor oil‐based formulations potentially applicable as biodegradable lubricating greases provides similar or lower values of the friction coefficient than traditional lithium greases, depending on the nature of thickener agent employed and tribological contact. In all cases, biodegradable formulations provide significantly lower values of the friction coefficient in tribological tests performed in the oscillatory mode. Weak oleogels like those thickened with glyceryl and sorbitan monostearates or acylated chitosan, provide the lowest values of the friction coefficient in every type of configuration or frictional test analysed. Biogrease formulations containing cellulose or chitin derivatives as thickener agents generally yield higher values of the friction coefficient, which may be comparable to those obtained with the reference lithium greases depending on the thickener and tribological configuration. In frictional tests performed in the rotational mode, the inclusion of ethyl cellulose in the formulation yields high values of the friction coefficient, which was attributed to the castor oil viscosity modification exerted by this additive. Wear results depend on the balance between the frictional behaviour, especially in the initial transient regime, and oleogel mechanical stability.

This investigation proposes different new alternatives to replace the traditional thickener agent in lubricating greases with others based on renewable resources in order to obtain a completely biodegradable formulation for different industrial applications.

This paper provides a resource of new practical friction coefficient data as well as a comparative analysis of the tribological response of these new formulations based on biogenic thickeners and other traditional lithium greases.

Material extrusion (MEX) 3D printers suffer from an intrinsic limitation of small size of the prints due to its restricted bed dimension. On the other hand, friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is gaining wide interest from automobile, airplane, off-road equipment manufacturers and even consumer electronics. This paper aims to explore the possibility of FSSW on Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene/Polylactic acid 3D-printed components to overcome the bed size limitation of MEX 3D printers.

Four different tool geometries (tapered cylindrical pin with/without concavity, pinless with/without concavity) were used to produce the joints. Three critical process parameters related to FSSW (tool rotational speed, plunge depth and dwell time) and two related to 3D printing (material combination and infill percentages) were investigated and optimized using the Taguchi L27 design of experiments. The influence of each welding parameter on the shear strength was evaluated by analysis of variance.

Results revealed that the infill percentage, a 3D printing parameter, had the maximum effect on the joint strength. The joints displayed pull nugget, cross nugget and substrate failure morphologies. The outcome resulted in the joint efficiency reaching up to 100.3%, better than that obtained by other competitive processes for 3D-printed thermoplastics. The results, when applied to weld a UAV wing, showed good strength and integrity. Further, grafting the joints with nylon micro-particles was also investigated, resulting in a detrimental effect on the strength.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that the welding of dissimilar 3D-printed thermoplastics with/without microparticles is possible by FSSW, whilst the process parameters have a considerable consequence on the bond strength.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of fly ash content on the friction–wear performance of bronze-based brake lining material.

In this study, bronze-based brake linings containing 0-12 weight per cent fly ash were produced by the hot-pressing process. The friction-wear properties of the unreinforced bronze matrix brake lining material and fly ash reinforced samples were investigated using a Chase-type friction tester. The hardness and density of the samples were also determined. The microstructures and friction surfaces of the samples were examined using scanning electron microscopy.

The experimental results showed that the fly ash content significantly affects the friction-wear properties of the brake lining material. It was found that the friction coefficient increases with the increase in the fly ash content for the brake lining materials studied. Moreover, the mass losses in the wear test were lower for the brake linings containing over 4 weight per cent fly ash than unreinforced bronze-based lining material.

This study has proven to be useful in exploring fly ash particles as low cost reinforcing materials in improving the friction–wear performance of bronze-based brake lining material. In addition, the use of fly ash particles in the manufacture of brake lining materials contributes to reducing the production cost of brake linings and to a sustainable environment.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a discrete element (DE) and multiscale modeling methodology to represent granular media at their particle scale as they interface solid deformable bodies, such as soil‐tool, tire, penetrometer, pile, etc., interfaces.

A three‐dimensional ellipsoidal discrete element method (DEM) is developed to more physically represent particle shape in granular media while retaining the efficiency of smooth contact interface conditions for computation. DE coupling to finite element (FE) facets is presented to demonstrate initially the development of overlapping bridging scale methods for concurrent multiscale modeling of granular media.

A closed‐form solution of ellipsoidal particle contact resolution and stiffness is presented and demonstrated for two particle, and many particle contact simulations, during gravity deposition, and quasi‐static oedometer, triaxial compression, and pile penetration. The DE‐FE facet coupling demonstrates the potential to alleviate artificial boundary effects in the shear deformation region between DEM granular media and deformable solid bodies.

The research is being extended to couple more robustly the ellipsoidal DEM code and a higher order continuum FE code via overlapping bridging scale methods, in order to remove dependence of penetration/shear resistance on the boundary placement for DE simulation.

When concurrent multiscale computational modeling of interface conditions between deformable solid bodies and granular materials reaches maturity, modelers will be able to simulate the mechanical behavior accounting for physical particle sizes and flow in the interface region, and thus design their tool, tire, penetrometer, or pile accordingly.

A closed‐form solution for ellipsoidal particle contact is demonstrated in this paper, and the ability to couple DE to FE facets.

The purpose of this paper is to extend complex-shaped discrete element method simulations from a few thousand particles to millions of particles by using parallel computing on department of defense (DoD) supercomputers and to study the mechanical response of particle assemblies composed of a large number of particles in engineering practice and laboratory tests.

Parallel algorithm is designed and implemented with advanced features such as link-block, border layer and migration layer, adaptive compute gridding technique and message passing interface (MPI) transmission of C++ objects and pointers, for high performance optimization; performance analyses are conducted across five orders of magnitude of simulation scale on multiple DoD supercomputers; and three full-scale simulations of sand pluviation, constrained collapse and particle shape effect are carried out to study mechanical response of particle assemblies.

The parallel algorithm and implementation exhibit high speedup and excellent scalability, communication time is a decreasing function of the number of compute nodes and optimal computational granularity for each simulation scale is given. Nearly 50 per cent of wall clock time is spent on rebound phenomenon at the top of particle assembly in dynamic simulation of sand gravitational pluviation. Numerous particles are necessary to capture the pattern and shape of particle assembly in collapse tests; preliminary comparison between sphere assembly and ellipsoid assembly indicates a significant influence of particle shape on kinematic, kinetic and static behavior of particle assemblies.

The high-performance parallel code enables the simulation of a wide range of dynamic and static laboratory and field tests in engineering applications that involve a large number of granular and geotechnical material grains, such as sand pluviation process, buried explosion in various soils, earth penetrator interaction with soil, influence of grain size, shape and gradation on packing density and shear strength and mechanical behavior under different gravity environments such as on the Moon and Mars.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of frictional materials and surface texture on the energy conversion efficiency and the mechanical output performance of the ultrasonic motor (USM).

A newly designed testing system was set up to measure the mechanical output performance of the USM. The influence of different frictional materials on the output performance of the USM was studied under the same assembly process and parameters. The surface texture was fabricated by laser ablation processing. The effects of surface texture and input parameters on the energy conversion efficiency and mechanical output performance of the USM were studied.

The results show that polyimide (PI) composites as frictional material can significantly improve the output performance of the USM compared to polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) composites. When the pre-load is 240 N, the energy conversion efficiency of the USM using textured PI composites as frictional material can reach 41.93 per cent, increased by 29.21 per cent compared to PTFE composites, and the effective output range of the USM is increased to 0.7-1.1 N m. Besides, the pre-load and surface texture have a great influence on the output performance of the USM.

PI composites can improve the mechanical output performance of the USM. Surface texture can also improve the interface tribological properties and the energy conversion efficiency based on the advanced frictional materials, which will contribute to the increment of the output performance of the USM under the same input conditions.

In order to improve the braking safety of mine hoisters, this paper aims to focus on the continuous repetitious emergency braking conditions to investigate an abnormal frictional phenomena called “Frictional catastrophe (FC)” and its mechanisms.

The non‐asbestos brake shoe of a mine hoister was selected as frictional material and its paring material is 16Mn steel. The tribological properties of the brake shoe were tested on the pad‐on‐disc friction tester by the simulation of continuous emergency braking conditions. The thermal analysis experiments, the temperature field simulations and the SEM analysis of the brake shoe were accomplished to reveal the mechanisms of the FC.

It was found that the friction coefficient of the brake shoe sometimes falls suddenly during braking. This abnormal frictional phenomena is called “Frictional catastrophe (FC)”. It is considered that the friction heat, which is accumulated rapidly by the braking on the surface of the brake shoe, makes the surface layer material qualitatively change from the solid state to a mixed state composed of gases, liquids and solid. The frictional modality of the braking changes accordingly from dry friction to lubrication with gases and liquids. The sudden lubrication makes the friction coefficient fall suddenly and induces the FC phenomena.

An abnormal tribological phenomena called “Frictional catastrophe (FC)” was found in this paper. The investigations about the behaviors and mechanisms of the FC are considered helpful for improving the braking safety of mine hoisters and other machines.

The purpose of this paper is to present some design guidelines for the selection of the materials of the main frictional pairs in a water hydraulic piston pump.

In the research, a specified test bench that can simulate the typical frictional pairs in a water hydraulic piston pump was built. The friction and wear behaviors of the three pairs in the pump with different materials combinations were tested on the test bench. The tested materials included metal, engineering ceramics and plastics. Some surface engineering technologies including plasma surface spray, laser clad and heat treatment were applied and tested. The matching schemes included hard‐to‐hard (such as ceramics‐to‐ceramics) and hard‐to‐soft (such as metal‐to‐plastics, ceramics‐to‐plastics).

Some principles for the materials selection in a water hydraulic piston pump were obtained. According to the test results, the combination schemes for the main frictional pairs in a water hydraulic piston pump were proposed.

A test apparatus that could simulate the movement of main frictional pairs in a water hydraulic piston pump more really than the other general materials machines was developed. Some materials including metal, engineering ceramics and plastics and some engineering technologies were tested. The research described here is an important foundation for the development of a water hydraulic piston pump.