Lubricated Wear Properties of Zn-30Al-3Cu-Si Alloys

Abstract

To assess the effect of silicon content (SC) and test parameters on the lubricated wear of Zn-30 wt.% Al-3 wt.% Cu-(0.5–5) wt.% Si alloys, six quaternary alloys were produced by casting. Their wear properties were investigated at different ranges of contact pressure (CP) of 1–8 MPa and sliding velocity (SV) of 1–3 ms−1 for two different sliding distances (SD) of 20 km and 108 km. It was observed that Si addition (SA) improved the tribological properties of Zn-30Al-3Cu alloy, but an increase in the SC above a certain percentage (0.5%) adversely affected these properties. Therefore, Zn-30Al-3Cu-0.5Si alloy demonstrated the lowest friction coefficient (FC) and wear volume (WV) among the alloys tested. The correlations between the lubricated wear properties (FC and WV) of the alloys and test conditions (CP and SV) were made by non-linear regression analysis using the wear test data. Finally, the equations for the relationship between the wear properties of the alloys and the test parameters were determined.