Friction, Wear, and Hardness Testing

Our extensive set of friction, wear, and hardness testing tools and analytical capabilities has been developed with support from a variety of Department of Energy and other-agency programs.  Some instruments, like the pin-on-disk testers, reciprocating pin-on-flat wear machines, and the continuous-loop abrasion tester, are more generic in nature.  Other instruments, like the repeated impact tester for valve materials and the sub-scale brake material tester, have been custom-built to simulate specific applications.   ORNL has long been a participant in ASTM standardization efforts and has led the development of four standards for friction, wear, and scratch hardness testing.

While most of our equipment is configured to study sliding friction and wear, we can also evaluate abrasive wear, slurry wear, rolling contact, and repeated impact damage.  Room temperature and elevated temperature microindentation hardness testers, two scratch testers, and a mini-viscometer to characterize test oils support the friction and wear effort.

The FWMUC staff works with HTML users to select the appropriate friction and wear test methods.  Then we help to interpret the results of those experiments based on decades of experience that spanning from fundamental surface science to applied engineering.

Our portfolio of testing instruments changes from time-to-time, and a list may also be found in the most current User Proposal form.  When in doubt about the choice of instruments for a particular project, contact the User Center Leader, Dr. Peter Blau, e-mail: blaupj@ornl.gov.