Method for conducting micro-abrasion wear testing of materials in oscillating sliding

Micro-abrasion is a kind of wear occurring on materials´ surfaces by action of three-body hard particles existing at the sliding interface. It is consistently reproduced by a popular laboratory method well-known as ball cratering test. Characteristically, it consists of wearing off a material sample by loading it against a ball that rotates continuously and unidirectionally under controlled conditions. A slurry containing a certain amount of hard micro-sized particles is dropped uninterruptedly onto the ball to get the particles enters the sliding contact by the ball´s rotary effect. The present method proposes a variant to the classic micro-abrasion methodology. It comprises changing the ball motion from a unidirectional to an oscillating for testing by considering new test parameters such as sliding arc lengths and frequency, which provides more realistic sliding conditions and wear rates for materials to be used in mechanical applications involving reciprocating and oscillating sliding.