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Dry Sliding and Rolling Tribotests of Carbon Black Filled EPDM Elastomers and Their FE Simulations
(2008)
Unlubricated sliding systems being economic and environmentally benign are already realized in bearings, where dry metal-plastic sliding pairs successfully replace lubricated metal-metal ones. Nowadays, a considerable part of the tribological research concentrates to realize unlubricated elastomer-metal sliding systems, and to extend the application field of lubrication-free slider elements. In this Thesis, characteristics of the dry sliding and friction are investigated for elastomer-metal sliding pairs. In this study ethylene-propylene-diene rubbers (EPDM) with and without carbon black (CB) filler were used. The filler content of the EPDMs was varied: EPDMs with 0-, 30-, 45- and 60 part per hundred rubber (phr) CB amount were investigated. Quasistatic tension and compression tests and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) were carried out to analyze the static a viscoelastic behavior of the EPDMs. The tribological properties of the EPDMs were investigated using dry roller (metal) – on – plate (rubber) type tests (ROP). During the ROP tests the normal load was varied. The coefficient of friction (COF) and the temperature were registered online during the tests, the loss volumes were determined after certain test durations. The worn surfaces of the rubbers and of the steel counterparts were analyzed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) to determine the wear mechanisms. Because possible chemical changes may take place during dry sliding due to the elevated contact temperature the chemical composition of the surfaces was also analyzed before and after the tribotests. For the latter investigations X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), sessil drop tests and Raman spectroscopy were used. In addition, the dry sliding tribotests were simulated using finite element (FE) codes for the better understanding of the related wear mechanisms. Finally, as the internal damping effect of the elastomers plays a great role in the sliding wear process, their viscoelasticity has been taken into account. The effect of viscoelasticity was shown on example of rolling friction. To study the rolling COF for the EPDM with 30 phr CB (EPDM 30) an FE model was created which considered the viscoelastic behavior of the rubber during rolling. The results showed that the incorporated CB enhanced the mechanical and tribological properties (both COF and wear rate have been reduced) of the EPDMs. Further on, the CB content of the EPDM influences fundamentally the observed wear mechanisms. The wear characteristics changed also with the applied normal load. In case of the EPDM 30 a rubber tribofilm was found on the steel counterpart when tests were performed at high normal loads. Analysis of the chemical composition of the surfaces before and after the wear tests does not result in notable changes. It was demonstrated, that the FE method is powerful tool to model both, the dry sliding and rolling performances of elastomers.
Elastomeric and other rubber-like materials are often simultaneously exposed to short- and long-time loads within engineering applications. When aiming at establishing a general simulation tool for viscoelastic media over these different time scales, a suitable material model and its corresponding material parameters can only be determined if an appropriate number of experimental data is taken into account. In this work an algorithm for the identification of material parameters for large strain viscoelasticity is presented. Thereby, data of multiple experiments are considered. Based on this method the experimental loading intervals for long-time experiments can be shortened in time and the parameter identification procedure is now referred to experimental data of tests under short- and long-time loads without separating the parameters due to these different time scales. The employed viscoelastic material law is based on a nonlinear evolution law and valid far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The identification is carried out by minimizing a least squares functional comparing inhomogeneous displacement fields from experiments and FEM simulations at given (measured) force loads. Within this optimization procedure all material parameters are identified simultaneously by means of a gradient based method for which a semi-analytical sensitivity analysis is calculated. Representative numerical examples are referred to measured data for different polyurethanes. In order to show the general applicability of the identification method for multiple tests, in the last part of this work the parameter identification for small strain plasticity is presented. Thereby three similar test programs on three specimen of the aluminum alloy AlSi9Cu3 are analyzed, and the parameter sets for the respective individual identifications, and for the combination of all tests in one identification, is compared.