Abstract
Since acoustic emissions (AEs) are elastic stress waves resulting from deformation and fracture of materials, the detected AE signals include a lot of information from deformation and fracture phenomenon. The AE waves generated from the interaction of frictional surfaces can be detected as AE signals by using an AE sensor attached to the objective material. Although friction force is widely used for evaluating frictional properties of tribomaterials, it is still difficult to obtain a precise measurement data because of the rigidity of friction systems as they could easily be changed by an installation of a spring. On the other hand, AE signal measurement has a much higher sensitivity for microscopic deformation and fracture phenomena compared to frictional resistance measurement. In this study, the relationships between frictional properties and AE signals were examined in two separate experiments: a previous experiment done by in situ observation using a pin-on-block sliding friction tester and a new experiment performed using a pin-on-disk-type sliding friction tester with a long sliding distance. It was found from these experiments that the average friction force has a correlation with the AE signals mean amplitude value, and that the amplitude of AE signals vary with the scale of the phenomenon.
KEYWORDS tribology, acoustic emission, friction and wear mechanism, evaluation method, visualization