Tribology of advanced materials and processes

Wear of materials is a significant industrial problem; a recent National Research Council of Canada report estimated that the cost of wear to Canadian Industry is approximately 10 billion dollars annually. This stresses the need to develop economically and technologically viable materials research programs in friction and wear of materials. The importance of this research field has become obvious to engineers in the U.S.A., Japan and Europe as many large research and development initiatives are now active. Unfortunately, the occurrence of similar programs in Canada is disproportionately low. The applicant proposes to conduct research in a number of key areas that are pivotal to enhancing our understanding of wear and friction of advanced materials and processes. The proposed research program will be of significant value to the automotive, aerospace and manufacturing industries. One pertains to the problem of low workability of wear resistance bulk superelastic TiNi. To achieve better workability the applicant proposes to synthesize a new generation of wear resistant micro-laminated superelastic Ti/TiNi/Ni composites. This is expected to have improved workability over bulk TiNi due to the presence of pure Ni and Ti layers. In another branch, the origin of friction will be studied using atomic force microscopy. The interactions of solids in contact during relative motion, at the microscale are of great importance to the understanding of friction phenomena. The contribution of surface roughness to the measured friction force at ultra-low loads and the effect of asperity height and slope on friction will be examined in details. Finally, wear monitoring of cubic boron nitride in precision finish hard turning (PFHT) will be pursued. Tool wear is one of the major factors contributing to geometrical error in machined components. In this area, the applicant intends to determine the relationships between tool wear, cutting forces, tool geometry and machining conditions in order to optimize PFHT operation for workpiece high quality surface finish and accuracy. Ultimately, it is hopped that a real-time monitoring strategy, based on the empirical data collected, will be developed to predict tool life. Such a strategy is expected to lead to major cost savings.