Evaluation on the Abrasion Resistance of Automotive Wires

Lin Fu, Thomas S. Lin, Caroline H. N. Laufer

Dow Wire & Cable, The Dow Chemical Company
Piscataway, NJ 08854
+1-732-563-5713 lfu@dow.com
thickness, conductor size and polymer type (thermoplastic vs.
crosslinked).

Abstract
One of the automotive wire market trends is downgauging of wire
size and insulation thickness so that OEMs can install more wires
in the harness assembly to meet increasing demand for power and
infotainment system in the car. As the insulation wall thickness is
reduced, the abrasion resistance of the automotive wire needs to
be robust to be handled during the harness assembling as well as
wire installation in the car. In this paper, the abrasion resistance of
ultrathin wall automotive wires (0.2 mm insulation thickness) was
studied. Five automotive wire compounds were evaluated for
Taber abrasion, scrape abrasion, and sandpaper abrasion
resistances. These five compounds consist of peroxide
crosslinkable, e-beam irradiation crosslinkable, and thermoplastic
types of formulations. The details of three abrasion testing
methods were compared. Correlations between Taber abrasion
resistance and material properties including flexural modulus,
Shore D hardness and tear strength were investigated. Different
abrading mechanisms of scrape abrasion and Taber abrasion on
the insulation materials were also discussed.

Abrasion resistance of polymers and polymer composites can

involve many complex phenomena. There are a lot of literature
reviews on abrasion of polymers and how to improve the abrasion
resistance of polymers and polymer composites [4-7]. When
mechanical, impact, and other kinds of forces are repeatedly
applied, the polymer surface loses mechanical cohesion and debris
is formed on the surface. Depending on the types of polymeric
materials, abrasion mechanisms can be abrasive, adhesive, fatigue,
corrosive, erosive, and delamination, etc. The abrasion resistance
of polymers or polymer composites is generally improved with the
addition of reinforcing fillers. Reinforcing fillers generally
increase the strength of the materials and thus abrasion resistance.
Abrasion resistance of filled polymer composites will depend on
filler hardness, stiffness of polymer matrix, and interfacial
adhesion between fillers and polymers.
In this study, we aim to understand how the wire abrasion
resistance is affected by insulation thickness, crosslinking method,
and material properties. We also investigate the correlations
between wire abrasion resistance (sandpaper abrasion and scrape
abrasion) and plaque abrasion testing (Taber abrasion).

Keywords:

Automotive wires; ultrathin wall; sandpaper

abrasion; scrape abrasion; Taber abrasion.

1. Introduction

Five representative automotive compounds including two

peroxide crosslinkable (Compounds 1 and 2), two irradiation
crosslinkable compounds (Compounds 3 and 4), and one
thermoplastic compound (Compound 5) were studied, as shown in
Table 1. Compound 1 is a polyethylene copolymer based material
with metal hydrate flame retardant. Compound 2 is another
polyethylene copolymer based material with metal hydrate flame
retardant. Compound 3 and 4 are polyethylene based materials
with metal hydrate flame retardants. Compound 5 is engineering
polymer based compound with non-metal hydrate flame retardant.
Compounds 1 and 2 are designed for 0.4 mm thin wall J-1128
applications. Compounds 3 and 4 are designed for 0.25-0.3 mm
thin wall ISO-6722 applications, and Compound 5 is designed for
0.2 mm ultrathin wall ISO-6722 applications.

Automotive wires require well balanced material properties of the

insulation materials, including pinch resistance, scrape abrasion
resistance, sandpaper abrasion resistance, flame resistance,
chemical resistance, heat aging resistance, etc. One of the
automotive wire market trends is downgauging of wire size and
insulation thickness so that OEMs can install more wires in the
harness assembly to meet increasing demand for power and
infotainment system in the car. For some cases, OEMs require the
wire with reduced insulation thickness has the performance
comparable to that of the wire insulation with regular insulation
thickness. Therefore, it becomes very challenging for the wire
with reduced insulation thickness to meet the wire performance
requirements such as sandpaper abrasion resistance, scrape
abrasion resistance, and pinch resistance.

Table 1. Comparison of five automotive wire compounds

There are three common standards that specify the automotive

wire performance requirements: SAE J-1128[1], SAE J-1678[2],
ISO-6722[3]. In these standards, the automotive wire insulations
are classified into different temperature classes (from 85 C to 250
C) as well as different insulation thickness. The insulation
thickness is categorized into ultra-thin wall (0.2-0.25 mm), thin
wall (0.25-0.65 mm), and thick wall (0.6-1.6 mm) for different
conductor diameters. Automotive wire compounds can be further
divided into three material categories: peroxide crosslinkable, ebeam irradiation crosslinkable, and thermoplastic compounds. The
requirements on abrasion resistance depend on the insulation

International Wire & Cable Symposium

Polymer

PO1

PO2

PO3

PO4

Engineering
polymer

Flame
retardants

Metal
hydrate

Metal
hydrate

Metal
hydrate

Metal
hydrate

Non metal
hydrate

Crosslink Peroxide Peroxide Irradiation Irradiation Thermoplastic

230

Standards

J1128

J1128

ISO 6722

Insulation
thickness

0.4mm

0.4mm

0.250.3mm

ISO 6722 J1678/ISO 6722

0.250.3mm

0.2mm

Proceedings of the 58th IWCS/IICIT

Plaques and wires were first made with the five automotive wire
compounds listed in Table 1. Thermoplastic and crosslinked wire
and plaques were studied. Material properties including flexural
modulus, Shore D hardness, tensile properties, and tear strength
were measured on plaques.

2. Experiments
2.1 Sample preparation
For the five automotive compounds, plaques with 1.9 mm, 3.2 mm
and 6.4 mm thicknesses were made by compression molding. The
five compounds were also extruded in a single-screw
Brabender extruder to make wires with 0.2 mm insulation layer.
The wire construction used in this study is 18 AWG/19 strand bare
copper. Wires made from Compounds 3 and 4 were e-beam
irradiation crosslinked at 18 Mrad. For peroxide crosslinked
Compounds 1 and 2, the insulations were extruded on 20 AWG/7
strand bare copper wires using a 2.5 single-screw extruder with
steam curing..

(1) Wire scrape abrasion tests

2.2 Material property testing

The five compounds were evaluated for the tensile properties
(ASTM 683, 500 mm/min pulling speed), Shore D hardness
(ASTM D2240, 15 second delay), and tear strength (ASTM
D1004, Die C). The above properties were measured on the test
specimens with nominal 1.9 mm thickness. Flexural modulus
(ASTM D790) was measured on the test specimen with nominal
6.4 mm thickness.

(2) Wire sandpaper abrasion tests

2.3 Abrasion resistance testing

Schematics for three abrasion testing methods are shown in Figure
1. Taber abrasion was conducted on plaques with two rotating
abrading wheels weighing 1.25 kg each. Taber abrasion resistance
was tested on disks with nominal 3.2 mm thickness using
Teledyne Taber Dual Abrader. Two round disks with 10 cm
diameter were used for each sample. The disks were cleaned with
isopropanol and the initial weight of each disk was recorded. Both
disks were secured to the Teledyne turntables. Each turntable has
two wheels (13 mm thickness) that are lined with a 180 grit
sandpaper. Each wheel was weighted with 1250 grams. The
wheel rotated tangentially to the turntable to impart the abrasion.
Each disk was subjected to 600 revolutions of abrasion cycle.
After each 100 revolution, each disk was cleaned with isopropanol
and the new weight was recorded. The weigh losses of the last
300 revolutions for each disk were used for the data analysis.
This procedure was performed on both sides of each disk. A total
of 6 measurements of the weight loss for each disk were collected
(12 measurements for each sample).

(3) Taber abrasion tests on plaques

Figure 1. Comparison of three abrasion testing
[3]
methods. (1) Wire scrape abrasion , (2) Wire sandpaper
[2]
abrasion and (3) Taber abrasion.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1 Taber abrasion resistance
3.1.1 Comparison of Taber abrasion resistances
Plaques of five automotive compounds were tested on Taber
abrasion resistance. For each compound, both thermoplastic and
crosslinked version of plaques were tested, except that Compound 5
is not crosslinkable and only thermoplastic data is shown. Figure 2
shows the Turkey-Kramer statistical comparison of Taber abrasion
mass losses for the above compounds. By comparing thermoplastic
and crosslinked versions of Compound 1 (1TH vs. 1XL), it can be
seen that crosslinking reduced the weight loss per 100 cycles and
improved the Taber abrasion resistance over thermoplastic version.
However, crosslinking of polymers doesnt always help improve
Taber abrasion resistance. Crosslinked Compounds 3 and 4 had
comparable abrasion resistance (mass loss) as the thermoplastic
versions. Compounds 3 and 4 consist of a high crystallinity
polyethylene and Compound 1 consists of low crystallinity

The scrape abrasion resistance was tested using the scrape tester
according to ISO 6722 [3]. It was conducted with a needle
scratching wire surface under 7N load. The number of cycles that
the needle takes to abrade through the insulation was recorded.
Sandpaper abrasion resistance was tested according to SAE
J1678[2]. It was conducted with a sandpaper sanding wire surface
under 163 g load. The total length of sandpaper that is used to
abrade through wire insulation was recorded.

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Proceedings of the 58th IWCS/IICIT

polyethylene copolymer. It is thus inferred that crosslinking

improves the Taber abrasion resistance for low crystallinity
materials but not for high crystallinity materials.

Figure 4 shows that weight loss in Taber abrasion decreases with

increasing tear strength of materials. The mechanism of Taber
abrasion is to remove materials off the surface, which involves the
detachment of fillers from polymer matrix and the tearing of
polymer chains. Tear strength reflects a response to the tearing
force induced during the abrasive action. Therefore, it is
reasonable to see the trend of decreasing Taber abrasion weight
loss with increasing tear strength.
Weight loss (g/100 cycles)

High crystallnity materials show higher Taber abrasion resistance

than low crystallinity materials (e.g. 1TH vs. 3TH, 1XL vs. 3XL).
Thermoplastic Compound 5 doesnt contain any metal hydrate flame
retardant but it shows very low mass loss compared to other
compounds. The engineering polymer based Compound 5 has high
abrasion resistance due to its intrinsic high hardness and toughness.
0.18
Mass loss (g/100 cycles)

0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04

0.18
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
0.0E+00

R = 0.72

5.0E+04

0.02
1 TH

1XL

2XL

3TH

3XL

4TH

4XL

5TH

1.5E+05

2.0E+05

Figure 4 Correlation between Taber abrasion resistance

and tear strength.

Figure 2. Taber abrasion resistance on five automotive

wire compounds.

3.2 Scrape abrasion resistance

3.2.1 Comparison of scrape abrasion resistances
The scrape abrasion resistances for five automotive wires are
shown in Figure 5. The study includes both crosslinked and noncrosslinked versions of wire insulations. The requirement in ISO
6722 for scrape abrasion resistance is 350 cycles. Compound 5,
which is designed for ultrathin auto wire application, is the only
sample meeting this requirement. All other compounds for thinwall automotive wire application have significantly lower scrape
abrasion resistances.
It was found that crosslinking the
compounds could slightly improve the scrape abrasion resistance,
e.g., 1TH vs. 1XL and 4TH vs. 4XL. The reverse trend seen in
Compound 3 is very likely due to unexpected diameter change
after irradiation curing. It was found that high crystallinity
compounds (Compounds 3 and 4) show higher abrasion resistance
than low crystallinity Compounds 1. Compound 5 contains high
hardness engineering polymer and it has the highest scrape
abrasion resistance.

3.1.2 Correlation between Taber abrasion and material

properties
In Figure 3, the Taber abrasion weight loss is plotted against the
flexural modulus for these five compounds. A relatively moderate
correlation is seen between Taber abrasion weight loss and flexural
modulus. Taber abrasion weight loss decreases with increasing
flexural modulus. The correlation in Figure 3 suggests that the
stiffness of materials plays an important role in preventing materials
from being removed by sandpaper on the abrading wheels.
Generally more energy is required to cut and remove a stiffer
material from the bulk materials. The abrasion depth after 600 Taber
abrasion cycles is about 0.38mm. This suggests that the abrasion
resistance is a surface phenomenon which occurs within a very thin
layer on the plaque. Although the general trend between Taber
abrasion weight loss and flexural modulus is seen in Figure 3, Taber
abrasion weight loss can be different for materials with comparable
flexural modulus if these materials show different surface
morphology, smoothness, or coefficient of friction.
0.18
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0

R = 0.66

100

27
12
10

200

400

600

800

1000

8
4

1TH

1XL

3TH

3XL

4TH

4XL

5TH

Figure 5 Scrape abrasion resistance.

1200

Flexural modulus (MPa)

3.2.2 Correlation between Scrape abrasion and flexural

modulus

Figure 3 Correlation between Taber abrasion resistance

and flex modulus.

International Wire & Cable Symposium

739

1000

Number of cycles

Weight loss (g/100 cycles)

1.0E+05

Tear strength (N/m)

Figure 6 shows relatively strong correlation between scrape

abrasion resistance and flexural modulus. The scrape abrasion

232

Proceedings of the 58th IWCS/IICIT

abrade the whole insulation. Most of wires marginally passed the

requirement. Compound 5 with the highest flexural modulus did
not show a high sandpaper abrasion resistance. The high abrasion
resistance of crosslinked Compound 1 may have resulted from the
relatively high gel content (80 wt%) of the compound. The large
standard deviation was due to the non-centering of wire insulation.
The above results indicate that high crystallinity, crosslinking, and
engineering polymer did not improve significantly sandpaper
abrasion resistance as they did in scrape abrasion resistance.

Scrape resistance (cycles)

resistance (number of cycles to fail) increases with flexural

modulus. This correlation is consistent with what we observed in
Figure 5. The high crysallinity and crosslinked materials, which
generally have high flexural modulus, show high scrape abrasion
resistance. The strong correlation indicates that scrape abrasion
resistance highly depends on the ability for a material to deform
under an applied load. This also suggests that the mechanisms for
scrape abrasion and Taber abrasion are different. More on the
difference between scrape abrasion and Taber abrasion will be
discussed in 3.2.3.

1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0

1000

100
2

R = 0.91

10

1TH

1
0

200

400

600

800

1000

1XL

3TH

3XL

4TH

4XL

5TH

Figure 8 Sandpaper abrasion resistance.

1200

Flexural Modulus (MPa)

Figure 6 Correlation between

resistance and flexural modulus.

scrape

3.3.2 Correlation between Sandpaper abrasion resistance

and Taber abrasion resistance

abrasion

Figure 9 shows the correlations between sandpaper abrasion

resistance of wires (thin wall and ultra thin wall) and Taber
abrasion weight loss. Thin wall wires have higher sandpaper
abrasion resistances than ultrathin wall wires due to the thicker
insulation layer and lower abrasion stress experienced.

3.2.3 Correlation between Scrape abrasion and Taber

abrasion resistance
Figure 7 shows poor correlation between scrape abrasion
resistance and Taber abrasion resistance. The poor correlation
results from different mechanisms of abrasion in these two tests.
In the scrape abrasion resistance test, a needle (polished spring
wire) with a 0.45 mm diameter abrades the wire surface along the
longitudinal direction. The main abrasion mechanism is the initial
surface deformation by the needle pressing into the insulation
surface and a subsequent removal of the insulation material by the
friction force between the needle and polymer surface. In the
Taber abrasion test, the sample surface is abraded repeatedly by
the rough sandpaper. The main abrasion mechanism is the
removal of the insulation material by the rough particles imbedded
in the sandpaper. Further discussion on the differences can be
found in a separate IWCS paper [7].

The results show a good correlation between sandpaper abrasion

and Taber abrasion weight loss for thin wall wires, but not for
ultrathin wall wires. The typical thickness change was ca. 0.38
mm after 600 cycle Taber abrasion. Therefore, Taber abrasion
test is similar to sandpaper abrasion test on 0.4 mm thin wall
automotive wire. The good correlation between sandpaper
abrasion resistance and Taber abrasion resistance suggests that
these two tests share a similar abrasion mechanism. Both tests use
sandpaper to abrasively remove materials off surface. On the
other hand, the thickness of ultrathin wire insulation is 0.2 mm, in
which surface finish, surface smoothness, and skin layer near the
outer surface of the insulation all become dominant factors in
determining the sandpaper abrasion resistance. This could be the
reason that Taber abrasion test does not correlate well with the
sandpaper abrasion test for the ultrathin wire.

R2=0.34
y = 275.11e-29.042x

100

1400
y =Thin
-12375x
+ 2546.4
wall
2
2R = 0.9884

1200

R2 = 0.3414

Sandpaper resistance
(mm)

(cycles)

Scrape resistance

1000

10

R =0.98

1000

1
0

0.05

0.1

0.15

Taber abrasion (g/100 cycles)

0.2

Figure 7 Correlation between scrape abrasion and Taber

abrasion resistance.

800

Ultrathin wall

600

y =R-688.65x
2=0.26+ 280.27
R2 = 0.2941

400
200
0
0

3.3 Sandpaper abrasion resistance

0.05

0.1

0.15

Taber abrasion (g/100 cycles)

0.2

Figure 9 Correlation between sandpaper abrasion and

Taber abrasion resistance.

3.3.1 Comparison of sandpaper abrasion resistances

The sandpaper abrasion resistances are shown in Figure 8. The
requirement in J1678 is a minimum 200 mm sandpaper length to

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Proceedings of the 58th IWCS/IICIT

[5]

4. Conclusions
Five automotive wire compounds were evaluated for Taber
abrasion resistance, scrape abrasion resistance, and sandpaper
abrasion resistance. These five compounds consist of peroxide
crosslinkable, e-beam irradiation crosslinkable, and thermoplastic
types of formulations. Effects of crosslinking, crystallinity and
insulation thickness, and material properties on abrasion resistance
were discussed for each abrasion test.

[6]

[7]

The abrasion resistances of ultrathin wall and thin wall automotive

wires, both crosslinked and thermoplastic, were investigated.
Generally speaking, thin wall wires have higher abrasion
resistance than ultrathin wall wires due to the thicker insulation
layer and lower abrasion stress experienced. It was found that
crosslinking improved the Taber abrasion resistance for low
crystallinity materials but not for high crystallinity materials.
Crosslinking improves scrape abrasion resistance for both low
crystallnity and high crystallinity materials. Generally, low
crystallinity materials show lower Taber abrasion resistance and
scrape abrasion resistance than high crystallinity materials.
However, high crystallinity materials did not improve sandpaper
abrasion resistance compared to low crystallinity materials.

J.Song and G.W. Ehresntein, in: K.Friedrich Eds. Advances in

Composite Tribology, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.,
Amsterdam, (1993).
S.J. Kim, M.H. Cho, R.H. Basch, J.W. Fash, and H. Jang,
Tribological Properties of Polymer Composites Containing
Barite (BaSO4) or Potassium Titanate (K2O 6(TiO2)),
Tribology Letters 17, 655-661 (2004).
C. Laufer, T.S. Lin and L. Fu, Fundamentals of abrasion
mechanisms in automotive wires, 58th IWCS Conference,
(November, 2009).

7. Authors

Dr. Lin Fu is a senior engineer in the Wire and Cable R&D group
of The Dow Chemical Company. She has her Ph.D. in chemical
engineering from Princeton University and B.S. degree from
Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Her expertise includes
material science, polymer rheology, self-assembly of
macromolecules and colloid science. She is a member of American
Institute of Chemical Engineers and American Chemical Society.

The correlations between Taber abrasion resistance, scrape

abrasion resistance, and material properties were examined.
Strong correlations were found between scrape abrasion resistance
and flexural modulus. Moderate correlations between Taber
abrasion and flexural modulus/tear strength were observed.
Different abrading mechanisms of Taber abrasion, sandpaper
abrasion, and scrape abrasion were discussed. Taber abrasion and
sandpaper abrasion show strong correlation for thin wall wires,
which suggests a similar mechanism of abrasion in these two tests.
No correlation is seen between scrape abrasion resistance and
Taber abrasion resistance. This indicates different mechanisms
between Taber abrasion and scrape abrasion. The main abrasion
mechanism in scrape abrasion is the initial surface deformation by
the needle, followed by the removal of the insulation material by
the friction force between the needle and polymer surface. In the
Taber and sandpaper abrasion tests, the main abrasion mechanism
is the removal of the insulation material by the rough particles
imbedded in the sandpaper.

Dr. Thomas S. Lin is a senior research specialist in the Wire and

Cable R&D group of The Dow Chemical Company. He has a
B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of Washington and
a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University. His
present research areas include polymer flame retardancy, polymer
stabilization, and nanocomposites for wire and cable applications.
He is presently an active member of SAE Cable Task Force. He is
a member of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Society
of Plastics Engineers, and Society of Automotive Engineers.

5. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Scott Wasserman for
his support in this project and Dr. Jeffrey Cogen and Kurt Bolz for
their helpful discussion. A special thank is extended to Erik
Groot-Enzerink for his help and discussion on the scrape abrasion
test.

6. References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]

SAE J1128, Low Voltage Primary Cable, (2005).

SAE J1678, Low Voltage Ultra-Thin Wall Primary Cable,
(2004).
ISO 6722, Road Vehicles -60 V and 600 V Single-core
Cables Dimensions, Test Methods and Requirements,
(2006).
A. Dasari, Z.Z. Yu and Y.W. Mai, Fundamental aspects
and recent progress on wear/scratch damage in polymer
nanocomposites, Mater. Sci. Eng. R (2008).

International Wire & Cable Symposium

Dr. Caroline H. N. Laufer is a senior engineer in the Wire and Cable

R&D group of The Dow Chemical Company. She earned her B.E.
in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union, and a Ph.D in
chemical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Following her postdoctorate fellowship in chemical engineering at
the University of Delaware, she joined The Dow Chemical
Company in Bound Brook, NJ, where her research areas include
polymer compatibilization and nanocomposities.

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