• Ajibola, Olawale Olarewaju

Abstract

Aluminium alloys have useful applications in automotive engine cylinders, brake cylinders and clutch mastercylinders. To assess the level of wear that occurs on the surface of a component subjected to wear by both friction/abrasion and corrosion, a wear jig was designed, fabricated, tested and evaluated using an aluminiumalloy substrate. The study reports the design, construction and testing of a wear test jig to be used in theevaluation of the synergetic effect of friction and hydraulic fluid on the wear of aluminium alloy. The workinvestigates the wear behaviour of aluminium alloy used in brake and clutch master cylinder floating pistons.The machine design incorporates a complete master cylinder unit, a hydraulic fluid reservoir, coupling,mounting stands, an electric/motorised jigging device, and the mounting wooden platform. The electric- powered jig can be regulated and operated at varying speeds. The fabrication was tested on batches of castaluminium alloy samples, and the wear was assessed based on the ASTM standards of calculating wearvolume. The results show a lower wear volume in hydraulic fluid than in the wear experiment without ahydraulic fluid, showing that there was higher wear resistance in the presence of hydraulic fluid. The machineis simple to operate. The wear- and speed-regulating capacities of the wear load unit were also observed to be highly satisfactory. The estimated cost of the design was about 120 000 Naira ($650.00), which is cheaper than imported wear-testing machines.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• corrosion
• experiment
• aluminium
• wear resistance
• wear test
• aluminium alloy