Friction and Wear of Engineering Polymer Gears

Abstract

Technical polymers are widespread in the machinery owing to their beneficial properties against metals as operation without lubrication, low friction and wear, light weight, corrosion resistance, low manufacturing costs etc. There are many sorts of technical polymers available of which sliding elements can be produced. To choose proper polymers for a given tribological application is not a simple task owing to many different parameters influencing the performance of a polymer sliding element. We launched a broad research project to clarify the friction and wear phenomena of plastic gears.