Bearing Design Guide: Chapter Seventeen: Wear Resistance of Bronze Bearing Materials

    
And now back to the Bearing Design Guide...

  Although most sleeve bearings are designed to operate in a film lubricant separating the mating parts, this does not always happen. Generally, the mated surfaces will deteriorate gradually by wear of hard particles infiltrating the surface area along with breakdown of lubricant. Lubricant starvation also may occur.

          Many wear tests have been performed to determine the comparisons that various alloys exhibit under the same conditions of lubrication, shaft and material hardnesses and surface finishes.

          In comparison tests, the results were reported to be as follows:

          Aluminum bronze CDA 954 exhibited the highest wear resistance.
      
          CDA 954 performed better than 3.9 times alloy CDA 938.
      
          CDA 863 performed better than 2.5 times CDA 938.
      
          CDA 905 showed a better wear resistance over CDA 938 by 1.9 times.

          CDA 932 alloy was found to be more wear resistant than CDA 938 by 1.2 times.

This chapter is short, sweet and right to the point.  If you don't want to "wear" yourself down with machine maintenance and part replacements, be sure to choose the correct material for your project.

That's all for now, until next time my metal loving friends...

Next Up: Chapter 18:Important Features of Aluminum Bronzes