Abstract
Fretting wear is often found at the contact surfaces of a tight assembly where small‐amplitude oscillatory movement occurs, which can be the concealed origin of some enormous accidents. Employment of solid lubrication coatings, as one of effective measurements to palliate the fretting damage, has been widely acknowledged. The present work studied the fretting behaviour of a molybdenum disulphide coating on SUS 316 stainless steel substrate by a relatively cheap and easy‐to‐use process: pressure spraying. Two contact configurations (cylinder‐on‐flat and ball‐on‐flat) were used in the tests with different displacement amplitudes (from 5 to 75 µm) and normal loads (from 100 to 400 N for ball‐on‐flat and from 400 to 1000 N for cylinder‐on‐flat). The results showed that large displacement amplitude is adverse to friction coefficient and coating lifetime and that under a critical contact pressure, coating endurance is improved contact pressure increases. Contact configuration influences friction coefficient by changing contact area and distribution of contact pressure. One master curve of average dissipated energy per cycle in initial stable stage was obtained for two contact configurations, which can be employed to approximately predict coating lifetime. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.