Contact fatigue and wear behaviour of bismaleimide polymer subjected to fretting loading under various temperature conditions

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Abstract

Cracking and wear induced by fretting is a critical problem for industrial composite structures. Thermosetting bismaleimide resin is a promising material due to its good mechanical and thermal properties. The effect of temperature regarding fretting cracking and fretting wear is presently investigated. The temperature effect on crack initiation and propagation is quantified combining experiments and modelling. The fretting wear is explained using a friction energy wear approach. A bilinear evolution of wear volume versus the dissipated energy is identified and related to a protective third body layer. These various damage evolutions are compared to the viscoelastic properties of the polymer.

Research highlights

► The influence of temperature on fretting sliding, cracking and wear behaviours of thermoset Bismaleimide polymer has been investigated taking into account its visco-elastic properties (DMA analysis). ► Temperature by decreasing the elastic modulus and increasing the friction coefficient extends the partial slip domain. Temperature decreases the fretting cracking endurance. A reverse method is applied to extrapolated fatigue cracking data from the fretting data. ► The wear volume versus friction dissipated energy evolution is bilinear and related to the third body structure which itself depends on temperature.

Introduction

To reduce energy consumption, the whole aeronautical industry is now focusing on lighter materials. This strategy requires that the current metal alloys be extensively replaced by the organic and ceramic composites. This extensive application of composites infers that such materials are now involved in highly stressed structures and are subjected to strong vibrations and high temperatures. Such severe loading conditions induce the so-called fretting damage in contact structures. Fretting is a contact loading characterised by very small oscillating displacement amplitudes inducing surface crack nucleation and/or surface wear. It has been shown that fretting damage highly depends on displacement amplitudes. Small amplitudes promote a partial slip interface including an inner stick zone surrounded by a sliding annulus. This sliding condition is characterised by a closed elliptical shaped fretting loop (i.e. tangential force evolution versus the applied displacement), which favours cracking damage. When the displacement amplitude increases above threshold transition amplitude (δt), the contact then runs under gross slip. Full sliding is activated over the whole interface leading to a quadratic fretting loop shape (Fig. 1).

This higher energy dissipative sliding condition favours wear by debris formation and debris ejection. Vingsbo and Soderberg [1] and Vincent et al. [2] completed this analysis by introducing the fretting map approach where the different sliding conditions and related damage evolution are plotted as a function of the displacement amplitude and normal force.

To better understand the fretting damage of composites a first strategy consists of investigating the matrix response. This is currently the objective of this work, focusing on thermosetting bismaleimide (BMI) resins. BMI resins are usually preferred for their high temperature stability up to 300 °C, above that of the conventional type of epoxy in this temperature range. BMI also displays good processing characteristics, a high modulus, excellent chemical resistance, good dimensional stability, good fatigue resistance and it is light weight [3], [4], [5], [6]. If the mechanical and fatigue properties of BMI resins are now well established, there is very little data concerning their tribological responses. Only the tribological behaviour of polyimide resins (a family related to BMI resin) has been given in Ref. [7]. Regarding fretting investigations, most of the attention has been paid to bulk polymers like PMMA [8], [9], [10], polycarbonate [11], polyamides [12], to a coating polymer [13], [14], [15], [16] or to the influence of fillers or fibre reinforcement. Deeper investigations have been performed on PEEK composites [17], [18] due to their good wear resistance, self-lubricating capacity in dry conditions or good corrosion resistance. Other polymer materials, like polyester or epoxy resins, have been investigated in the study of the fretting damage. Chateauminois and co-workers [19], [20], [21] analysed an in-situ observation of failure processes and predicted, in particular, the location and orientation of fretting-induced primary cracks in epoxy resins. Friedrich [22] studied the influence of glass fabric on the fretting–fatigue behaviour of polyester and found that the fabric improved the wear behaviour of the polyester. However, very little has been done to describe bismaleimide polymer fretting damage responses, especially as a function of temperature. This is the reason for the present research work, where a global methodology is developed to investigate BMI/AISI 52100 steel fretting behaviour. It consists of identifying the different sliding domains, and the cracking and the wear responses as a function of displacement amplitude and temperature. One original aspect of this research is that the different types of fretting damage will be compared to the polymer’s viscous properties, identified from dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA).

Section snippets

Materials

The bismaleimide resin (BMI) used in this research is a commercial (HexPly M61, Hexcel, France) four-component-modified resin consisting of three BMI and O,O′-Diallyl Bisphenol A components. The BMI resin is a heat resistant thermosetting polymer (up to 300 °C). The standard curing cycle for BMI resin is an autoclave process at 190 °C for 4 h, followed by a freestanding post-cure out of autoclave at 220 °C for 16 h (heating rate: 1 °C/min) [23].

During the fretting tests the BMI resin was tested

Dynamic mechanical analysis

Since BMI resin is a time-dependent polymer, its viscoelastic properties versus temperature and frequency appear as a crucial parameter to interpret its fretting response. DMA analyses have been performed to characterize this. Storage modulus E′ and loss factor tan δ evolutions versus temperature are plotted for different frequencies representative of the fretting analysis (Fig. 7).

It is interesting to note that all the curves are nearly superimposed, which suggests that for the studied

Energy wear concept

Extending the fretting damage investigation, the surface wear induced by debris formation and ejection was investigated under gross slip conditions through a normal force range from 30 to 250 N, and different temperature conditions. To quantify the wear rate, an energy wear approach was adopted, which consisted in comparing the wear volume increase as a function of the friction work dissipated through the interface (i.e. accumulated dissipated energy) [30]. This dissipated energy corresponds to

Conclusion

This study was conducted to examine the contact fatigue and wear behaviour of bismaleimide resin under plain fretting loading as a function of temperature. Based on these results, the following conclusions can be drawn:

  • 1.

    Using the results of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), viscoelastic properties such as the elastic modulus and the loss factor of BMI resin according to the temperature were determined. Different damping peaks due to the different molecular motions (relaxations) in the resin

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Hexcel Composites (France), and especially to C. Dauphin, for supplying materials.

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