Abstract
In high temperature hot forming processes (forging), the tool surfaces are the privileged places for mechanical, thermal and physico-chemical solicitations. More precisely, friction and wear play an important part in tool surface damage. The tool steel grades exhibit damages such as oxidation. Moreover oxide scales formed had a significant effect in failure forging tools on wear mechanisms and have to be considered in the wear model development. The damage caused by oxidation is very different according to the nature and the physical properties of formed oxide layers in the contact surfaces. The objective of the present work is to give an outline of the effects of the nature and the morphology of supplied X40CrMoV5-1 steel (AISI H13) oxides particles before slow sliding onto rubbing brass-steel surfaces on friction transition and wear mechanisms. It is the first to show the effects of thin flats plates having different micrometric size supplied before friction. In order to improve and to have a better insight into the wear phenomena taking place during the first instants of sliding, this work conducted has also demonstrated the role of this third body introduced before friction on the development and establishment of tribological circuit on the rubbing surface. In this paper, the wear investigations are carried out using a pad-on-disc tribometer. The pad-on-disc sliding wear experiments were performed at a load of 500 N and a sliding velocity of 0.065 mm/s in normal atmosphere. The pad is made of brass and the disc is made of cast iron lamellar. Static oxidation test used to evaluate samples oxidation characteristics consisted of one cycle of 70 h at 600 A degrees C. In brief examination of rubbed pad surfaces after friction was conducted using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to identify the wear mechanisms under oxidation surface. In addition, the samples structure and properties were examined by optical microscopy and SEM, profilometrical measurements and X-ray diffraction. Tribological results, correlated with microscopic observations, are conducted to establish a phenomenological model of wear mechanisms describing the evolution of the third body in contact. The effect of planning flats plates of third body on friction evolution was also discussed.