Fretting wear behaviors of steel wires in coal mine under different corrosive mediums

The failure of steel wire rope mainly resulted from rust, wear or broken of steel wires. Effects of various corrosive mediums (dry friction, three kinds of corrosive solutions) on fretting wear behaviors of steel wires were investigated on the self-made fretting wear rig under varied normal forces (from 10 N to 30 N) and displacement amplitudes (from 5 μm to 200 μm). The fretting running behaviors, wear mechanisms and the effects of different corrosive mediums were analyzed by using scanning electron microscope and X-ray energy spectrum analysis. The results reveal that the fretting running regimes of fretting wear can be determined according to the curves of friction force versus displacement amplitude and damage morphologies. And finally the running condition fretting map (RCFM) was established. It was found that corrosive mediums could affect the friction behaviors, wear mechanisms and RCFM. Compared with the dry friction condition, three corrosive mediums not only transform the boundaries of partial slip regime (PSR)/mixed fretting regime (MFR) and MFR/slip regime (SR) obviously to the smaller displacement amplitudes, but also reduce friction coefficient and increase the materials loss. The fretting wear mechanisms are mainly delamination, abrasive wear and oxidative wear in the three fretting regimes under dry friction, whereas abrasive wear and electrochemical corrosion dominates the wear in three kinds of corrosive solution. It is observed that slight damage appears at the contact edges in PSR, strong plastic deformation accompanied with the damage occurs in MFR, and severer degradation on the wear scars appears in SR.