Accelerated wear testing of PTFE composite bearing materials

Hertzian line contact stresses between a rotat ing metal cy l inder and a reciprocating f lat str ip of the bearing material are used in an accelerated wear test described in this paper. The test readi ly demonstrates differences in the wear behaviour between d i f ferent PTF E-based dry bearing materials. For one widely-used woven PTFE f ibre composite, the relat ionships between wear and stress, temperature, counterface roughness and f lu id contaminat ion were shown to be simi lar to those found in long-term bearing tests