Wear 259 (2005) 609–612

Short communication

Numerical analysis of pin on disc tests on Al–Li/SiC composites

C. González a, A. Martı́n a, J. Llorca a, M.A. Garrido b, M.T. Gómez b, A. Rico b, J. Rodrı́guez b,∗
a Department of Materials Science, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria s/n 28040, Madrid, Spain
b Departamento de Ciencia e Ingenierı́a de Materiales, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Tulipán s/n E28933, Móstoles, Madrid, Spain

Received 16 September 2004; received in revised form 4 February 2005; accepted 4 February 2005
Available online 10 May 2005

Abstract

It is well known that metal matrix composites exhibit marked improvements in wear resistance when compared to unreinforced alloys. In
operating conditions, components made of Al-based composites are usually subjected to elevated temperatures and high contact loads. In
this work, an experimental programme on a pin on disk test on Al–Li/SiC metal matrix composite and the corresponding unreinforced alloy
was carried out at different loads and temperatures. A finite element model to simulate wear tests was also developed. The sliding distance of
the pin was discretized in several steps according to the input velocity. Wear is taken into account updating the geometry of the pin in every
step. The material worn out in each step is computed using the Archard law and the normal pressure acting on the contact surface. The nodes
of the contact surface were displaced in the normal direction and the geometry and the finite element mesh of the pin were automatically
updated. The model includes some other important features such as Coulombic friction, temperature-dependent plasticity behaviour of the
pin, heat generation at the contact surface by plastic deformation of the pin. Thermo-mechanical coupled equations resulting in every step
were integrated using Abaqus Standard code.
© 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Al–Li composites; Finite element model; Wear

1. Introduction plete understanding of the wear behaviour of metal matrix

The wear behaviour of aluminium matrix composites has
focused the interest of many researchers during the last 15
years. From an experimental point of view, the tribological
response of these materials has been widely studied. Several
papers can be consulted to remind the established knowl-
edge about the effects of load, sliding speed or temperature
on the wear rates and the predominant mechanisms associ-
ated with each condition [1,2]. Wear maps have been de-
veloped showing transitions between different wear regimes.
Unfortunately, this extensive experimental work has not been
completed with a similar modelling effort. In that sense, the
support of the finite element method may be valuable to un-
derstand the thermo-mechanical state under the conditions
of a wear test [3]. This may be a valuable point of a com-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 1488 7159; fax: +34 1488 8150.
E-mail address: j.rodriguez@escet.urjc.es (J. Rodrı́guez).
composites.
In this work, a numerical analysis of the experimental pin
on disc tests of an aluminium alloy 8090 reinforced with SiC
particles is performed using the finite element code Abaqus
[4]. Experiments were also carried out at different conditions
of pressure and environmental temperature, in order to vali-
date the goodness of the numerical model.
2. Experiments
2.1. Materials
The investigation was performed on a commercial Al–Li
alloy 8090 and the composite reinforced with 15% of sili-
con carbide particles. Due to the presence of lithium, this
alloy exhibits elastic modulus significantly higher than more
conventional aluminium alloys. The elastic modulus of the
composite Al–Li 8090 + 15% of SiC is over 100 GPa.

0043-1648/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.wear.2005.02.107
610 C. González et al. / Wear 259 (2005) 609–612

The material was supplied by Cospray (Banbury, UK) in

the form of an extruded bar produced by spray co-deposition
of the matrix and particles onto a substrate. The size of
the reinforcements was 7.5 ± 2.4 ␮m with an aspect ratio of
2.4 ± 1.2. Matrix grain size is on average 12 ␮m in the longi-
tudinal direction and 6 ␮m in the long and short transversal
ones. Details about microstructure can be consulted in the
reference [5].

2.2. Experimental setup

Pin on disk tests were performed to evaluate the wear be-

haviour of the materials. Wear tests were carried out in a
Wazau machine TRM 1000, able to perform a standardized
pin on disc test [6]. Nevertheless, several modifications were
introduced, mainly regarding the pin shape. Prismatic pins
were made of the material under study with rectangular sec-
tion of 2.5 mm × 6.3 mm. With this geometry, the nominal
contact area was maintained constant during the tests in spite
of the wear process. The disk, made of carbon steel (SAE
1045), rotates horizontally at sliding speed of 0.1 m/s. A dead
weight loading system was used to perform three sets of tests
carried out at normal loads of 100, 150 and 250 N, corre-
sponding to nominal pressures of 6.3, 12.5 and 16.5 MPa, re-
spectively. The bulk test temperature was modified from room
temperature to 250 ◦ C by a furnace installed in the machine.
Preliminary tests show that 500 m was sufficient distance to
reach a steady-state wear regime. Specimens were not lu-
bricated and the debris formed was not eliminated. Friction
torque and the linear wear amount were continuously mea-
sured during the test, providing data of friction coefficient and
wear rate. Curves registered by the tribometer instrumenta-
tion are presented in Fig. 1.
3. Results
Experimental measurements of the friction coefficient are
maintained in values approximately constant around 0.4 for
Fig. 2. Temperature effect on wear behaviour.
all conditions tested. On the contrary, wear rates show clear
differences depending on the load and, specially, the tem-
perature of the test. Fig. 2 shows the results obtained when
a nominal pressure of 16.5 MPa is applied. As it can be ap-
preciated, the wear rates of the unreinforced alloy and the
composites are quite moderate up to a transition tempera-
ture (mild wear), above which the wear rate experiments a
huge increase (severe wear). In fact, the presence of the re-
inforcement does not represent an improvement of the wear
resistance under the experimental conditions. The beneficial
effect of the reinforcement is limited to increase the transi-
tion temperature from the mild to the severe wear regime. The
effect of normal pressure on the wear behaviour of the com-
posite is included in Fig. 3. An approximately linear response
is observed for the three temperatures analysed. Room tem-
perature results are apparently anomalous because wear rates
are lower at elevated temperatures. This effect is confirmed
by different tests and it shows pressure dependency. Temper-
ature may alter the wear mechanism, assisting the formation

Fig. 1. Linear wear amount and coefficient of friction curves. Fig. 3. Pressure effect on wear behaviour of Al–SiC composite.
 C. González et al. / Wear 259 (2005) 609–612
of tribolayers, but not any experimental evidence has been
currently found.
4. Numerical simulations
We have developed a model to simulate wear during the
pin on disk tests. According to the well-established Archard
law [7], the wear rate (or pin height loss per unit time) is
proportional to the product of the applied pressure p and the
sliding velocity following:
K
w= pv
H(T )
where H(T) is the hardness of the material – which depends on
temperature – and K is the wear coefficient. Under steady-
state assumptions, the differential equation can be numeri-
cally integrated to obtain the material worn as a function of
the sliding distance of the pin:
K
h = pvt
H(T )
where vt is the distance travelled by the pin and h is its
local height variation. The 3D geometry of the problem was
simplified to a 2D plane stress thermo-mechanical problem.
The initial geometry of the pin was assumed to be rectan-
gular in shape where the initial height was set to 2 mm and
the length in the sliding direction 6 mm, respectively. The
sliding distance is discretized in steps of vt of length. Each
step starts mapping the nodal and element variables values
obtained in the former step onto the new one. All the nodes
belonging to the upper edge were forced to remain in a hor-
izontal straight line during the simulations using multipoint
constraint equations. Then, the pin slides the distance vt
and the temperature and pressure distribution along the con-
tact is obtained. Equation (2) is applied to each node of the
model resulting in a modification of the actual geometry of
the pin. Finally, the mesh is updated automatically using a
free mesher package [8].
The contact pressure and temperature needed in Equation
(2) were computed through the finite element method using
the code Abaqus. The geometry of the pin was discretized us-
ing three nodes isoparametric triangles under plane stress as-
Fig. 4. Temperature distribution in the Al/SiCP pin for one of the simulations carried out at 20 ◦ C.
611
sumption. Wear usually involves strongly coupled problems
such as mechanical, thermal and contact. The heat produced
by friction must be redistributed towards the two bodies in
contact. Thus, this heat source decreases the hardness of the
material and increases the wear rate. The contact problem
was solved using the contact algorithm provided by the finite
element package. The Coulomb friction model together with
the friction coefficient obtained from the tests was used to this
end. The total heat flux produced by friction, q = µpv, must
be distributed between the two bodies in contact according
to the following Equation [9]:
(1) α=

1
(3)
1+ ρd cd κd /ρp cp κp
where ρ, c and κ are the density, specific heat and thermal
conductivity of the disk and pin, respectively and α is the
heat fraction transmitted to the pin. These physical properties
were taken from well-established values obtained from the
literature for Al alloys and SiC particles.
(2) The bulk material (composite and the unreinforced al-
loy) was assumed to behave as isotropic thermo-elastoplastic
solids that follow the incremental J2 theory of plasticity. The
elastic modulus and yield stress as a function of tempera-
ture can be found in [10]. Hardness was assumed to de-
pend on the yield stress of the material through the well-
known fully plastic relation H = 3σ y . No heat generation due
to transformation of plastic work was assumed to occur dur-
ing the simulations. For simplicity, the thermo-mechanical
behaviour of the disk was not taken in to account and its
behaviour was assumed to respond to a rigid isothermal
material.
Simulations were carried out at room temperature, 100,
150, 200, 250 and 300 ◦ C, respectively, with an applied nor-
mal pressure of 16 MPa and a sliding velocity v = 0.1 m/s.
All the simulations were stopped when the difference of the
wear rate between two consecutive steps was negligible. At
this point, the heat boundary problem was assumed to attain
the steady-state regime and the mechanical properties do not
vary significantly.
Fig. 4 shows the nodal temperature for one of the simula-
tions carried out at 20 ◦ C. The temperature of the upper nodes
was kept constant and equal to the simulation temperature.
612 C. González et al. / Wear 259 (2005) 609–612
Fig. 5. Normal stress distribution in the Al/SiCP pin for one of the simulations carried out at 20 ◦ C.
The maximum increase of temperature, ≈9 ◦ C, is attained
in the right corner. No attempt was made to obtain the flash
temperature resulting from the real roughness of the sliding
surfaces. Another interesting result is presented in Fig. 5,
where the normal stress in the vertical loading direction is
plotted through out the pin. The stress distribution is fairly
constant and equal to the applied nominal normal pressure,
16 MPa. However, the stress distribution differs from the ho-
mogeneous one at the right and left contacts as a result of
the boundary conditions. The nodes belonging to the upper
surface were enforced to remain horizontal during the simu-
lations introducing a bending moment that was proportional
to the friction force and the pin height. This fact modifies the
stress distribution around these points increasing the com-
pression force at the right edge and decreasing at the left one.
Thus, the real contact area does not correspond to the nominal
one.
Finally, Fig. 6 shows the results of the adimensional wear
rate (wear rate related to the 20 ◦ C wear rate) as a function of
Fig. 6. Adimensional wear rate (wear rate related to the room temperature
one) as function of temperature for the Al–Li/SiCp composite and the unre-
inforced alloy.
temperature for the Al/SiCp composite and the unreinforced
alloy. In all the cases, the wear rate increases continuously
with temperature as a result of the softening effect of hardness
of the Archard wear law.
5. Conclusions
Experiments performed have confirmed that, under the
conditions analysed, the temperature effect on the wear rate
is more critical than that of pressure. As it was observed in
previous investigations with other aluminium matrix compos-
ites [11], the role of the reinforcement particles is to increase
the transition temperature from the mild to the severe wear
regimes. These tendencies can also been observed from the
numerical model, although quantitative agreement with the
experiments is not achieved.
Acknowledgement
The authors are indebted to Comunidad de Madrid for the
financial support through grant.
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