Wear behavior of polyethylene crosslinked with organic peroxide

ERICA C. MOLINARI; MARCELO D. FAILLA; WALTER R. TUCKART

Congreso; 13er Congreso Internacional en Ciencia y Tecnología de Metalurgia y Materiales; 2013

The aim of the present work is to study the wear behavior of crosslinked high density polyethylene (HDPE) sliding on steel in order to know the influence of the molecular structure on the wear performance of the material. Materials with different molecular structures were generated by modifying a HDPE with various concentrations of an organic peroxide. The characterization carried out allowed determining the gel fraction, the molecular weight between crosslink, the crystallinity level and the Vickers microhardness. The tribological properties were evaluated by performing block-on-ring wear tests under controlled temperature ambient. The wear results show that the materials modified with concentrations of peroxide lower than 0.5 wt% have higher wear rate than the unmodified polymer. The materials modified with higher peroxide concentration display decreasing wear rate with the peroxide concentration, reaching values much lower than the corresponding to the original polymer when the peroxide concentration is larger than 1 wt%.