Work of adhesion and fretting: influence of material surface properties and medium

This work attempts to link tribological and adhesion phenomena in fretting conditions. Fretting experiments were carried out in three environmental conditions (air atmosphere, demineralized water and kerosene) and with various couples of industrial materials. Contacting materials and liquids were chosen mainly for their surface properties, in order to have a wide range of surface free energies. The fretting device included a pin‐on‐plane configuration. The pin (or slider) was fixed and the plane was the moving substrate. The total distance (dT) covered by the moving substrate was chosen as the tribological parameter representative of the history of an experiment. The distance dT was then compared to surface parameters such as Dupré's work of adhesion between the two substrates in contact (W12) and with three bodies (W132), the index 3 being the liquid medium. In these conditions, dT = f(W12) and dT = f(W132) variations were found to be linear, thus showing a clear link between friction and adhesion. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.