Wear 255 (2003) 742750

Microscale abrasive wear of polymeric materials

P.H. Shipway , N.K. Ngao
Advanced Materials Group, School of Mechanical, Materials, Manufacturing Engineering and Management, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

Abstract Polymeric materials are now commonly employed as components in mechanical devices, and as such are subject to wear. Abrasive wear of polymer components may occur either by sliding against a rough counterface or by abrasion by hard particles. Whilst previous work has considered the three body abrasion of polymers using large abrasives common in the ASTM G65 test, this work presents results concerning three-body abrasion of polymers with a ne (25 m) SiC abrasive. The test employs a rotating sphere as the counterface against which the test specimen is loaded with abrasive slurry being entrained. It is demonstrated that the test provides valid results for all polymer types only at low loads which aid slurry entrainment. Test parameters are identied where the test results yield little concerning true material behaviour, reecting instead something of the test characteristics. Under conditions which are deemed to yield results reecting the true wear rates of the polymers, the expected spherical cap geometry of the wear scar is established very early in the test sequence. A range of polymers has been examined. The samples are well discriminated by the test, and a reasonable correlation with both the Martens hardness and the RatnerLancaster factor (1/ b b ) is found. 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Test methodology; Martens hardness; RatnerLancaster correlation; Plastics

1. Introduction Polymeric materials are being increasingly used in a wide number of applications where resistance to wear is important. These range from its use as a bearing material (in applications such as machinery parts and biomedical joint replacements) to its use as a glazing material where damage results in loss of optical properties. Polymers are ideal materials for bearing applications due to their general resistance to corrosion, galling and seizure, their tolerance to small misalignments and shock loading and their low coefcients of friction; as glazing materials, their low density and high toughness (compared to traditional glass) along with high transparency are desirable properties. In many applications, polymers may be subjected to abrasive wear, often due to contaminants within a system, and such abrasion may result in loss of function. The abrasive wear of polymers and polymer-based composites is the subject of a large body of literature. A number of test methods have been employed; both two-body and three-body abrasion have been examined, the former with both abrasive papers and rough metal counterfaces. Most test programmes have employed two-body abrasion tests
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-115-951-3760; fax: +44-115-951-3764. E-mail address: philip.shipway@nottingham.ac.uk (P.H. Shipway).

whereas in practical applications, three-body abrasion is far more prevalent [1]. It is widely recognised that the processes of wear in polymers are not well understood [2]. In a review of some of the early literature concerning abrasive wear of polymers, Evans and Lancaster [3] show that in tests covering eighteen polymer types, low density polyethylene exhibited the lowest wear rate in abrasion against a rough mild steel but the highest wear rate in abrasion with coarse carborundum paper. Thus, it can be seen that abrasive wear behaviour of polymeric material is complex. Indeed, Budinski [4] notes that most of the studies on the abrasion resistance of plastics are inconclusive and tend to recommend further study. A number of models which attempt to relate the abrasive wear resistance of polymers to other mechanical properties have been proposed. One of the earliest of these is commonly known as the RatnerLancaster correlation [5]. It predicts that the wear rate of a polymer, W is given by: W= k Hb b (1)

where is the coefcient of friction, H the hardness and b and b are the stress and strain at tensile break. Moreover, Lancaster [6] has demonstrated experimentally that the wear rate of a range of polymers (with rates covering nearly two-orders of magnitude) is inversely proportional

0043-1648/03/$ see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0043-1648(03)00106-6

P.H. Shipway, N.K. Ngao / Wear 255 (2003) 742750 Table 1 Properties of polymers examined in this study Polymer type High density polyethylene Polycarbonate Polyethyleneterephthalate glycol Polymethylmethacrylate Polypropylene Polystyrene Polyvinyl chloride Abbreviation HDPE PC PETG PMMA PP PS PVC Tensile breaking stress ( b ) (MPa) 32 72 50 70 40 40 30 Tensile breaking strain (b ) (MPa) 800 150 54 4 100 7 33 Wear coefcient (103 mm3 N1 m1 ) 2.4 8.9 8.5 26.3 8.5 18.2 10.2

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Martens hardness (HM ) (MPa) 29.5 48.8 56.2 103.9 28.4 79.4 59.6

to the product of b and b . Other models have been proposed and Budinski [4] examined ve such models. He indicated that the correlations proposed by all the models between the abrasive wear behaviour and other relevant properties of twenty-one polymeric materials was poor. Other workers have also demonstrated poor correlation between experimental data and one or more of the models [7,8]. Larsen-Basse [7] argued that the mechanisms of wear differed depending upon the polymer type. For example, in PMMA, two-body grooving wear resulted from abrasion with SiC paper with tearing and cracking in the grooves; however, in ductile polypropylene, grooving still occurred, but unlike PMMA, no tearing and cracking was observed. In his review paper, Briscoe [2] concludes that the models suppose a certain mechanism of material removal to prevail, and that changes in mechanism will tend to make the model predictions invalid. Most of the published literature in this area which has concerned abrasion against particulates has examined behaviour with particles normally greater than 100 m in size. However, Roberts and Chang [9] indicated that the mechanism of wear of the polymers examined in their study changed as the size of the abrasive particles dropped below approximately 10 m. More recently, a number of workers [1,1012] have employed a micro-scale abrasion test to examine the behaviour of polymeric materials with abrasives of the order of 4 m in size. In this test method, abrasion is produced by the rotation of a ball (with no translation) against a at surface of the test material with an abrasive slurry being entrained into the contact zone. This results in wear of the test material, with the material removed being in the form of a spherical cap of the same geometry as the ball. In a polymeric material, the wear scar would normally be up to approximately 3 mm in diameter and 60 m deep. In cases where the properties of polymer may vary with depth from a surface (due to, for example, environmental degradation), the relatively shallow wear scar allows the abrasion resistance to be easily examined as a function of depth. Also, such a test allows the investigation of the behaviour of thin polymer coatings (such as paints) whereas most other tests require substantially thicker samples. The micro-abrasion test has so far only been applied to a limited range of polymeric materials, namely, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and paint

systems. The current paper examines the micro-scale abrasion behaviour of a range of polymeric materials in order to further understand the mechanisms of wear dominant in these materials when examined in this way.

2. Materials and experimental methods The microabrasion behaviour of seven commercially available polymers was examined. The polymer types along with tensile mechanical property data supplied by the manufacturers are listed in Table 1. The experiments from which the tensile test data have been derived have been conducted according to the standard DIN 53455. PC, PETG, PMMA and PS were all transparent polymers employed in various applications for their optical properties. Microabrasion testing of the polymers was performed with a commercially available apparatus, the TE66 Micro-Scale Abrasion Tester (Phoenix Tribology Ltd., Newbury, UK). A schematic diagram of the apparatus is shown in Fig. 1. Samples were placed in a holder block which was

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the microscale abrasion test apparatus.

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by the following equation: d V = d 2 r 3

(2)

where r is the radius of the spherical cap (assumed to be the radius of the ball). The depth, d, of the cap can be calculated from the optical measurements of the scar radius, a as follows: (3) d = r r 2 a2 Further examination of the wear scars produced in the polymers by micro-scale abrasion was performed with a Surfcom stylus-type prolometer (Advanced Metrology Systems, Leicester, UK) and a scanning electron microscope (JEOL 6400). The Martens hardness (HM ) of the polymer samples (load divided by area of the indenter penetrating below the original sample surface whilst under load) were measured using a TE76 depth sensing microhardness indenter (Phoenix Tribology Ltd., Newbury, UK). All indentations were made to a depth of 20 m, and the values quoted in Table 1 are the average of 25 separate indentations. The standard error in the mean of the Martens hardness values was less than 0.8 MPa in all cases. 3. Results 3.1. Test characteristics Initially, all the polymers were subjected to wear at a range of loads with a xed sliding distance of 100 ball revolutions. The wear volume was calculated from optical measurements of the scar. The resulting data are shown in Fig. 3. The polymers can be divided into two distinct groups based upon their wear behaviour: HDPE, PP and PVC all showed a monotonic increase in wear rate with increasing load; however, the other polymers exhibited an increase in wear rate as the load was initially increased from its lowest level, but then a sharp decrease in wear rate as the load was further increased. A decrease in wear rate with increasing load has been observed previously in a number of materials [1,14,15] and is associated with the formation of ridges within the wear scar. Fig. 4 shows an SEM micrograph and a prole across a scar formed in PMMA by wear under a 2 N load which exhibits a ridge. Fig. 4a shows the ridge towards the centre of the wear scar. SEM combined with EDX analysis indicated that there is a ridge of PMMA itself which has not worn down with an additional layer of compacted SiC on top of the ridge. The prole across the scar (Fig. 4b) indicated that the ridge was higher than the original height of the unworn polymer due to the deposition of compacted SiC abrasive. The prole of the ball following such tests exhibited only minimal wear and showed no grooves to match the ridges on the test coupon. Such ridged wear scars indicate that the test is invalid in terms of a measurement of the wear behaviour of the test-

Fig. 2. Micrograph of SiC abrasive particles.

rotated around its pivot until the sample came into contact with the ball. A load was applied via a dead-weight system; the loads applied varied from 0.5 to 4.0 N. The ball was rotated about a horizontal axis parallel to the plane of the specimen surface while abrasive slurry was dripped onto the ball and entrained into the gap between the ball and specimen resulting in wear of the specimen. Specimen wear results in an impression, which takes the form of a spherical cap with a geometry similar to that of the ball. In light of previous research on UHMWPE [12], 25.4 mm diameter nylon balls (Du Pont Zytel PA66 balls supplied by Dejay Distribution Ltd., Wokingham, UK) were employed in this work in order to ensure good entrainment of particles into the wear zone. The microabrasion tests were conducted with a slurry of SiC (grade C5, F1200, approximately 4 m particle size, Washington Mills Ltd., Manchester) suspended in distilled water and delivered to the ball at a rate of approximately 38 l s1 . The slurry employed was at a concentration of approximately 17.2 vol.% SiC. An SEM micrograph of the abrasive particles (Fig. 2) clearly shows their highly angular morphology. The ball-specimen sliding speed was maintained at 0.112 m s1 throughout the tests (this was at the top end of the range examined by Rutherford and Hutchings [13] where they demonstrated that wear rate was independent of sliding speed) and was chosen to minimise the time required for testing. A new ball was used for each test, but the ball was run in against a mild steel test coupon for 200 revolutions before being employed in the test to ensure that its surface was reproducible [14]. Tests were run for a range of sliding distances ranging from 1 to 100 revolutions of the ball. The wear rates quoted are the average of three separate tests. Examination of the wear scars following testing was made by optical microscopy (Nikon Optiphot) to allow measurement of the scar diameter and to check the roundness of the scar. To enable the volume of the wear scar to be calculated, spherical cap geometry of the wear scar was assumed (as has generally been demonstrated to be the case [10,13]). The volume, V, is related to the depth, d, of the wear scar

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Fig. 3. Microscale abrasion rates of various polymers as a function of load.

piece itself, with wear rate being instead governed by abrasive entrainment. For the polymers which did exhibit the formation of ridges in the wear scars at high loads, two regimes may be dened, namely, one where ridging does not occur and one where ridging does occur. A number of tests across the range of polymers were performed to examine the development of wear volume with sliding distance; behaviour was only examined where ridging did not occur. It was found that a linear increase in wear volume with sliding distance was generally observed; Fig. 5 shows two examples of such behaviour for PMMA. It can be seen that in these cases, wear is proportional to sliding distance even at small distances (i.e. there is little evidence of any running-in behaviour). Fig. 6 shows SEM images of the surface of PMMA following wear under a load of 1.0 N as a function of sliding distance (these

Fig. 4. Detail of scar in PMMA following wear under a 2 N load for 100 ball revolutions: (a) SEM micrograph of ridge within wear scar (sliding direction from top to bottom); (b) prole across scar showing geometry of ridge.

Fig. 5. Wear volume of PMMA vs. sliding distance under two applied loads.

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Fig. 6. Detailed morphology of wear surface of PMMA following microabrasion under 1.0 N load as a function of sliding distance: (a) 1 rev (0.080 m); (b) 5 rev (0.399 m); (c) 20 rev (1.596 m); (d) 100 rev (7.98 m). Sliding direction from top to bottom in all cases.

images correspond to one set of data in Fig. 5). As the number of revolutions increased the surface became more worn, as expected. After just one revolution, there was little evidence of directionality in the wear scar, with pitting as the predominant wear mechanism (Fig. 6a). At greater sliding distances, there was evidence for wear due to both particle grooving (parallel lines) and particle rolling (pitting) [16]. It may be argued that three-body wear with rolling particle motion predominates at long sliding distances (Fig. 6d). Fig. 7 shows proles through the centres of the wear scars

perpendicular to the direction of sliding (PMMA, 1.0 N applied load) generated by both one and ve ball revolutions. Neither of these scars exhibited ridging. For each scar, the prole predicted on the assumption that the wear scar is a spherical cap with the same radius of curvature as the nylon ball is also presented. It is notable that even after just one revolution of the ball, a wear scar almost 5 m deep has been developed. In this case, there is a deviation of the geometry of the scar from its assumed spherical cap. However, following only ve revolutions of the ball, a wear scar more than 16 m deep has been developed with a geometry very close to that assumed, as also observed by other workers [10,13]. The pressure distribution in the initially non-conforming surface contact between the ball and testpiece will tend to promote wear to form a conformal contact; it is clear that such a development of a conformal contact can be very rapid. 3.2. Microabrasive wear behaviour of different polymers Since the formation of ridges within a wear scar invalidated the measure of wear resistance, it was not possible to make direct comparisons between materials under these conditions. Instead, comparisons of the microscale abrasive wear behaviour of the seven polymer types was made following wear under a 0.5 N load where ridging did not occur in any case. Wear consisted of 100 revolutions of the ball, following which the resultant scars were measured an examined. The wear rates of the polymers are listed in Table 1. Fig. 8 shows SEM micrographs of the wear scar morphology

Fig. 7. Measured and predicted proles across wear scars in PMMA following microscale abrasion under a load of 1 N for two sliding distances.

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Fig. 8. Detailed morphology of wear scars following microabrasion under 0.5 N load and 100 ball revolutions: (a) HDPE; (b) PC; (c) PETG; (d) PMMA; (e) PP; (f) PS; (g) PVC. Sliding direction from top to bottom in all cases.

of the seven polymers. A range of different surface morphologies can be observed. The wear scar in HDPE (Fig. 8a) is distinctly different from all the other scars. No evidence of rolling is present, with instead long, deep parallel grooves in the direction of sliding being observed. The scar in PP (Fig. 8e) is also distinct from the others; here, very little directionality at all is observed and also little evidence for particle indentation is seen. All the other samples ex-

hibit similar morphologies with a combination of shallow grooving, parallel to the direction of sliding (two-body damage) and also pitting due to particle indentation in rolling (three-body damage). The degree of damage differs throughout the samples as does the proportion of two- and three-body abrasion. The PMMA and PS (Fig. 8d and f, respectively) show the greatest level of damage, dominated by three-body abrasion. As the level of damage decreases,

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4. Discussion 4.1. Ridge formation in polymers Fig. 3 shows the wear rate of the various polymers as a function of load. It is well established [1,15] that the formation of ridges within a wear scar during the microscale abrasion test is due to slurry starvation, promoted either by low slurry viscosity or high applied loads. The formation of a ridge in a scar is associated with a signicant reduction in the wear rate as the dominating wear mechanism changes from abrasion to sliding of the ball against the counterface. Trezona and Hutchings [1] performed microscale abrasion tests on PMMA, aluminium, hardened steel and alumina with a smooth hard steel ball and found that only the softer materials, namely, PMMA and aluminium exhibited the formation of ridges. Of the four materials examined, these two materials were signicantly softer than the ball. They suggested that when the ball is harder than the test coupon, the abrasive particles embed into the test coupon and are thus not carried through the contact zone to induce wear. Fig. 3 shows that in the current test programme, three of the polymers (HDPE, PP, PVC) did not exhibit ridge formation at any of the loads examined; examination of the hardnesses of the polymers (Table 1) shows that two of these (HDPE and PP) have very low hardness compared to the others and here it is in fact the harder materials that exhibit ridge formation. Thus, the explanation of Trezona and Hutchings [1] is not applicable in this case. Other factors must also govern the tendency for ridge formation in these materials. Wettability of the testpiece by the slurry has been previously suggested [15] where slurry entrainment is encouraged by good wetting of the contact area. It is also notable that all the polymers which exhibited ridge formation were glassy,

Fig. 9. Polymer wear rate (under a 0.5 N load) vs. the reciprocal of the product of tensile breaking stress and tensile breaking strain (the Ratner Lancaster correlation).

so does the proportion of three-body abrasion until in PETG (Fig. 8c) there is little damage at all. It is noticeable that the wear scars in PMMA under a 1 N load (Fig. 6d) and a 0.5 N load (Fig. 8d) are very similar indicating that the same mechanism of wear operated under the two loads. Figs. 9 and 10 show the wear rates of the various polymers (0.5 N, 100 ball revolutions) plotted against 1/ b b (the RatnerLancaster correlation) and against HM , respectively. In both cases, there is a reasonable correlation. It can be seen that the polymers which exhibited the highest wear rates also exhibited the lowest values of ( b b ) and the highest hardnesses. Conversely, those with the lowest wear rates showed high values of ( b b ) and low hardness.

Fig. 10. Polymer wear rate (under a 0.5 N load) vs. Martens hardness.

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transparent materials whereas the non-ridging polymers where all partially crystalline; rationalisation of such an observation requires further work. A micrograph of a ridge formed in PMMA is shown in Fig. 4 along with a prole across it. The ridge is composed of unworn polymer; however, in this case, SiC particles have formed an agglomerate (identied by EDX analysis) upon the ridge. Normally, ridges that are observed in such tests are of the same order of magnitude in height as the size of the abrasive particles so that, despite the ball exhibiting very little wear, general wear of the testpiece can proceed by abrasion even though there is ball-testpiece contact on the face of the ridge itself [14,15]. However, in this case, the prole (Fig. 4b) shows that the height of the ridge (including the SiC agglomerate) is now above that of the original surface of the PMMA; the ball will run against this and little further wear of the polymer will occur as the gap between the ball and sample surface is now so large. Despite the uncertainties concerning the formation of ridges in this test system, it is clear from Fig. 3 along with evidence from the examination of the wear scars that ridges did not form at the lower loads examined and care was taken in further testing (where it was hoped to ascertain the wear rate of the material itself) to be operating in a regime where ridge formation did not occur. 4.2. Development of wear with sliding distance Fig. 5 shows examples of the development of wear with sliding distance for a polymer that was not exhibiting the formation of ridges, namely, PMMA under 0.5 and 1 N load. The linear behaviour indicates that the test is well-behaved, and that wear rates of the polymers may be derived from plots such as these. It is of interest to note that there is no signicant running-in period (i.e. the wear develops linearly from the origin). Figs. 6 and 7 show the development of wear in PMMA under a 1 N load (non-ridging regime) with sliding distance. Fig. 6a shows the scar following only one ball revolution (80 mm); little obvious directionality was observed in the scar, indicating that three-body abrasion was operating. As wear proceeded, the degree of damage increased signicantly. Both pitting damage and directional grooving can be observed in the later wear scars; however, Fig. 6d indicates that the wear damage is dominated by pitting indicating that the three-body mechanism is the primary mode of wear. It may be argued that three-body wear becomes more dominant as the test proceeds; such three-body rolling of abrasive particles is promoted by an already roughened surface of the testpiece. However, such a shift in the dominant mechanism has not resulted in any signicant changes in wear rate (Fig. 5). Whilst a change in mechanism with sliding distance has been observed, the mechanism was generally the same at any point in a given wear scar and the spatial separation of two-body abrasion and three-body abrasion within a wear scar, as observed by Trezona et al. [16], was not observed. After one revo-

lution (Fig. 6a), the degree of damage appears slight; however, Fig. 7 shows that even after such small sliding distances, material has been removed to a depth of 5 m. The prole in this case shows signicant deviation from that of the assumed spherical cap (Fig. 7); however, after ve revolutions of the ball, the spherical cap geometry is fully developed with small deviations close to the surface associated with sample scufng [1]. Again, despite the fact that the depth of wear was up to 16 m after ve ball revolutions (Fig. 7), the damage observed is relatively slight (Fig. 6b). 4.3. Microabrasive wear behaviour of different polymers Fig. 3 shows the wear rates of the different polymers under a load of 0.5 N which was the test load employed to ensure no ridging of any of the polymers. It can be observed that the two softest polymers (HDPE and PP, see Table 1) also exhibit the lowest wear rates and the two hardest polymers (PS and PMMA) also exhibit the highest wear rates. Classical wear theory does not account for this. The RatnerLancaster correlation between the polymer wear rates and (1/ b b ) is shown in Fig. 9. Whilst the correlation is reasonable, some anomalies are noticeable. PC and HDPE have similar values of (1/ b b ), as do PMMA and PS. However, in each pair, there are very signicant differences in wear rate, with the lowest wear rate in each pair being exhibited by the material with the largest tensile breaking strain. Budinski [4] examined the correlation between hardness and abrasion rate of a range of polymers, using both Shore hardness and Rebound hardness. He found no correlation between hardness and wear rate over the range of materials examined. However, in this work, a plot of the wear rate versus Martens hardness (Fig. 10) exhibits a reasonable correlation (better than the RatnerLancaster correlation) with the wear rate increasing with increasing polymer hardness. Early work by Lancaster [6] demonstrated a general decrease in abrasive wear rate of a range of polymers (two body abrasion against coarse carborundum paper) with increasing hardness. It is difcult to rationalise these two conicting observations. In Lancasters work [6], the abrasion was very aggressive and the wear rate of the polymers may have been dominated by the depth of indentation of the coarse abrasive particles. However, in the current work, it is observed that a high hardness is linked with a low elongation to fracture. It appears to be this latter attribute which most strongly governs the wear behaviour in microscale abrasion testing. Fig. 8 illustrates the morphology of the wear scars in the seven polymers. The three samples which show the highest wear rates (PMMA, PS and PVC) all exhibit a similar scar morphology in which indentation type damage has occurred with little directionality. These three materials also show the lowest values of tensile strain to failure. Such indentation type damage may be associated with low ductility and a tendency to crack under repeated indentation during testing. PC and PETG exhibit decreasing damage with an increasing

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level of two body grooving and a reduction in the presence of indentation type cracking. The wear rates of these two materials are very similar despite the fact that the strain to failure for PC is signicantly larger than that for PETG. The wear scar morphology for the two softest polymers (HDPE and PP) are signicantly different from the others and from each other. Both show high ductility with evidence of substantial plastic ow. The HDPE in particular exhibits only two-body grooving. Such grooving is promoted by the low hardness and high tensile strain to failure. The good correlation between hardness and resistance to microscale abrasion indicates that for resistance to damage by small-scale contaminants, softer polymers with larger strains to failure are required. This work has demonstrated that these can be selected on the basis of indentation hardness with some level of condence. It is notable that amongst the transparent polymers used for glazing applications, PC and PETG are signicantly more resistant to abrasion than PMMA or PS, and as such offer better long-term life without loss of optical function.

ridging always occurred at intermediate loads for the transparent polymers.

Acknowledgements Support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) (Grant Number GR/M92836), Plint and Partners Ltd. and Phoenix Tribology Ltd. is gratefully acknowledged. References
[1] R.I. Trezona, I.M. Hutchings, Three-body abrasive wear testing of soft materials, Wear 233235 (1999) 209221. [2] B.J. Briscoe, Wear of polymers: an essay on fundamental aspects, Tribol. Int. 14 (1981) 231243. [3] D.C. Evans, J.K. Lancaster, The wear of polymers, in: D. Scott (Ed.), Treatise on Materials Science and Technology, vol. 13, Academic Press, New York, USA, 1979, pp. 85139. [4] K.G. Budinski, Resistance to particle abrasion of selected plastics, Wear 203204 (1997) 302309. [5] J.K. Lancaster, Abrasive wear of polymers, Wear 14 (1969) 223239. [6] J.K. Lancaster, Basic mechanisms of friction and wear of polymers, Plast. Poly. 41 (1973) 297306. [7] J. Larsen-Basse, Slurry abrasion of polymers under simulated submarine conditions, Wear 122 (1988) 135149. [8] J. John Rajesh, J. Bijwe, U.S. Tewari, Abrasive wear performance of various polyamides, Wear 252 (2002) 769776. [9] J.C. Roberts, H.W. Chang, Two-body abrasion of some polymers against 650 m SiC abrasives, Wear 79 (1982) 363374. [10] M. Choudhury, I.M. Hutchings, The effects of irradiation and aging on the abrasive wear resistance of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene, Wear 203204 (1997) 335340. [11] K.L. Rutherford, R.I. Trezona, A.C. Ramamurthy, I.M. Hutchings, The abrasive and erosive wear of polymeric paint lms, Wear 203204 (1997) 325334. [12] F.J. Buchanan, P.H. Shipway, Microabrasion-a simple method to assess surface degradation of UHMWPE following sterilisation and ageing, Biomaterials 23 (2002) 93100. [13] K.L. Rutherford, I.M. Hutchings, Theory and application of a micro-scale abrasive wear test, J. Test. Eval. 25 (1997) 250260. [14] D.N. Allsopp, R.I. Trezona, I.M. Hutchings, The effects of ball surface condition in the micro-scale abrasive wear test, Tribol. Lett. 5 (1998) 259264. [15] P.H. Shipway, C.J.B. Hodge, Microabrasion of glassthe critical role of ridge formation, Wear 237 (2000) 9097. [16] R.I. Trezona, D.N. Allsopp, I.M. Hutchings, Transitions between two-body and three-body abrasive wear: inuence of test conditions in the microscale abrasive wear test, Wear 225229 (1999) 205214.

5. Conclusions It has been demonstrated that, with care in choosing the test conditions, the microscale abrasion test can be employed to investigate the abrasion rate of polymeric materials with abrasives of very small size. In spite of concerns that the abrasive wear behaviour of polymers may be very different with small abrasives than with large, traditional correlations (such as the RatnerLancaster) are reasonably successful with these test conditions. The wear behaviour and rates of polymers depended critically on the polymer type. High wear was associated with indentation-type morphology in the wear scar and low values of tensile strain to failure. Polymers with high strains to failure exhibited less indentation dominated wear. In the case of HDPE, a solely grooving type mechanism of wear was identied. It was demonstrated that there was a good correlation between polymer hardness and polymer wear rate. Under certain conditions, ridges formed in the wear scars invalidating the test. The tendency for ridge formation differed for the different polymers. Whilst no explanation was offered for these differences, it was noted that ridging was not observed in the partially crystalline materials, whereas