PSI - Issue 81

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ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 81 (2026) 478–485

VIII International Conference “In - service Damage of Materials: Diagnostics and Prediction“ (DMDP 2025) Tribological aspects of material damage in machine and mechanism components during operation Andrii Gypka*, Oleg Lyashuk, Oleg Tson, Roman Leshchuk, Ann Tson, Valeriy Buhovets,

Tatyana Pyndus, Stepan Ostapchuk, Mikhail Bey Ternopil Ivan Puluj National Technical University, 46001 Ternopil, Ukraine

© 2026 The Authors. Copy from the contract: Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of DMDP 2025 organizers Keywords: friction, wear, friction testing machine, wear rate, friction coefficient, contact electrical resistance, tribological pair, lubricating environment, dissipative secondary structures, structural-energy adaptability. 1. Introduction Ensuring the tribological reliability and durability of machines and mechanisms remains a key challenge in modern mechanical engineering, including the automotive industry. Wear of tribological pair components is among the primary factors limiting the service life of machinery, as it leads to the deterioration of operating conditions, increased maintenance and repair costs, and ultimately to the failure of critical assemblies and units. Addressing this problem is complicated by the lack of effective express methods and evaluation criteria for wear intensity under normal friction and wear conditions that account for the complex physicochemical processes occurring on the contact surfaces of tribocouples and their correlation with the formation, transformation, and degradation of dissipative secondary structures (DSS). Traditional approaches to evaluating the kinetics of wear processes, such as mass loss measurements or dimensional changes of specimens, require significant time and resource expenditures, which limits their applicability in real operating conditions of Abstract This paper presents the results of a comprehensive study on friction and wear processes for various materials and lubricating environments using the method of measuring the contact electrical resistance of tribological pairs over a wide range of smoothly varying load parameters. The necessity for developing a new universal friction testing machine with enhanced technical capabilities, increased stiffness of the tribological unit and loading mechanism, and an improved drive system has been substantiated. An express method has been proposed to determine the operating ranges and levels of normal friction and wear based on contact electrical resistance parameters, and to detect critical load conditions associated with the transition to damage-inducing regimes. A correlation relationship was established between fundamental tribological parameters (wear rate, friction coefficient), the magnitude of the contact electrical resistance of a tribocouple, and the structural state of the friction surfaces of the investigated specimens (types of dissipative secondary structures) within the ranges of normal mechano- and thermo-chemical friction and wear. The obtained experimental results confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of using contact electrical resistance as one of the most informative diagnostic parameters for studying processes occurring in frictional contact zones of both model and real machine components and mechanisms.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +380980188199. E-mail address: Gypkab@gmail.com

2452-3216 © 2026 The Authors. Copy from the contract: Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of DMDP 2025 organizers 10.1016/j.prostr.2026.03.082