In order to minimize the fuel consumption in internal combustion engines, the frictional losses must be minimized between the moving parts such as the sliding bearings. In this study, the sliding friction between the pin and roller in a heavy duty truck engine's valvetrain has been investigated. Three combinations of production components with different surface treatment were used: steel pin with steel roller, steel pin with WS2 coating inside the roller and PVD coated steel pin with steel roller. In-house test rig was used, enabling controlled conditions close to the real engine. A new method for alignment using a laser scanner was introduced together with high resolution tactile measurements of radial displacement during test. Surface topography of pins and rollers was measured before test with a mechanical stylus instrument. The WS2 showed 3.1 times and the PVD showed 2.5 times lower friction than the steel type at low speeds. Even though the friction reduction of WS2 over the PVD is not large, the important advantage is that the WS2 can be manufactured at lower costs than the PVD one. Good correlations among the friction, initial roughness and radial displacements were also found.

In this paper three different combinations were evaluated: (i) steel pin vs steel roller, (ii) steel pin vs tungsten disulfide (WS2) coated roller and (iii) PVD pin vs steel roller. The aim of this paper is to properly quantify the topographical variations of the pin/roller surfaces and asses the appropriateness of the measuring technique before and after the tribological tests primarily performed for friction reduction. In-house tribometer was used to test the friction/wear performance of the three different combinations. Surface topographies were measured by white light interferometer (3D) and mechanical stylus (2D). To enable fast relocation on the stylus and interferometer, a 3D printed mask was used. Regarding the pins, Sa, Sk and Svk have been found to follow the wear changes: the lowest wear change for the combination (ii) and highest for the combination (i) but less for the combination (iii). Regarding the changes of Ra on the pin locations where edge contact occurs, the largest changes were found to be for combination (i), followed by combination (ii) and (iii). Ra and Rk change less significantly for the roller surfaces. Good correlations among the friction, initial/final roughness and radial displacements were also found.

The reliability and lifetime of machine elements such as gears and rolling bearings depend on their wear and fatigue resistance. In order to screen the wear and surface damage, three finishing processes: (i) brushing, (ii) manganese phosphating and (iii) shot peening were applied on three disc pairs and long-term tested on a twin-disc tribometer. In this paper, the elastic contact of the disc surfaces (measured after only few revolutions) was simulated and a number of functional and roughness parameters were correlated. The functional parameters consisted of subsurface stresses at different depths and a new parameter called 'pressure spikes' factor'. The new parameter is derived from the pressure distribution and takes into account the proximity and magnitude of the pressure spikes. Strong correlations were found among the pressure spikes' factor and surface peak/height parameters. The orthogonal shear stresses and Von Mises stresses at the shallowest depths under the surface have shown the highest correlations but no good correlations were found when the statistics of the whole stress fields was analyzed. The use of the new parameter offers a fast way to screen the durability of the contacting surfaces operating at similar conditions. © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd.

In order to choose the right manufacturing process in terms of costs and component performance, three differently manufactured surfaces were investigated: brushed, multiple shot-peened and phosphated surfaces. In-house twin disc tribometer was used to test the wear and fatigue performance of the different surfaces. The evoution of the surface topography has been evaluated by in-line stylus and microscope image measurements as well as interference measurements of replicas taken at various test intervals. The form changes has been assessed by stylus measurements. The results have shown that the surface roughness played the major role to wear and fatigue performance.

3D analysis of surface topography is becoming a more used tool for industry and research. New ISO standards are being launched to assist in quantifying engineering surfaces. The traditional optical measuring instrumentation used for 3D surface characterization has been optical interferometers and confocal based instrumentation. However, the resolution here is limited in the lateral dimension to the wavelength of visible light to about 500 nm. The great advantage using the SEM for topography measurements is the high flexibility to zoom from low magnifications and locating interesting areas to high magnification of down to nanometer large surface features within seconds. This paper presents surface characterization of dental implant micro topography. 3D topography data was created from SEM images using commercial photogrammetric software. A coherence scanning interferometer was used for reference measurements to compare with the 3D SEM measurements on relocated areas. As a result of this study, measurements emphasizes that the correlation between the accepted CSI measurements and the new technology represented by photogrammetry based on SEM images for many areal characterization parameters are around or less than 20%. The importance of selecting sampling and parameter sensitivity to varying sampling is high-lighted. Future work includes a broader study of limitations of the photogrammetry technique on certified micro-geometries and more application surfaces at different scales. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.