Abstract
The investigation about the fundamentals of tribology deals with three different effects regarding wear and friction phenomena. In wear experiments on large, macro and nano scales, the differences and similarities between the wear mechanisms of different scales will be examined and compared. The nano-scale tests are carried out with an atomic force microscope (AFM) in order to find basics about the wear characteristics. The stress and energy dissipating factors inside the polymer material are investigated by FEM simulations. An artificial neural network (ANN) based software tool correlates wear results and materials’ properties. The overall aim of this project is the prediction of the wear behaviour of different nano-particle reinforced polyetheretherketone (PEEK) composite materials based on the gained experimental results on large, macro and nano scales.
Consortium
Project Leader:
Professor Alois K. Schlarb
INM - Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken, Germany and
University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Principal Investigators:
Dr. Amaya Igartua
Fundación TEKNIKER, Eibar, Spain
Professor Patrick De Baets
University of Gent – Laboratorium SOETE, Gent, Belgium
Associated Partner:
Professor Andrea Danani
University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Manno, Switzerland
