Effects of Ag-Carried Content in P/Ag Nanocomposites on Tribological Properties of 45 Mild Steel Friction Pairs

In this paper, some Ag-carried palygorskite nanocomposites P/Ag were prepared, their silver content were 1.3%, 4.61%, 9.54% separately. To investigate the effects of the silver content on tribological properties of 45 mild steel pairs, the P/Ag carried different Ag content were used as lubricant additive and their tribological properties were tested on the MMU-10G testing machine. The wear mass loss is used to assess the anti-wear properties of different additives. The surface topographies and main elements are analyzed through SEM and EDS after running for 30 hours. The results show that the friction coefficient and the wear mass loss significantly decrease along with the increase of silver content in the P/Ag: the average friction coefficient of the P/Ag with 9.54% silver reduces about 65% as much as the one with 1.3% silver, meanwhile, the wear mass loss decreases 57% likewise. The surfaces after rubbing 30 hours, some kind of auto-restoration films that contains sort of characteristic elements such as O, Si, Mg, Al, Ag etc. are formed on the surfaces. With the help of this kind of films, the anti-wear properties of the friction pairs are finally improved. The factors that cause the improvement of anti-friction properties of the friction pairs lie in the quality and the silver content of the auto-restoration films formed on the surfaces of friction pairs.