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Concept
Tribocorrosion
Summary
Tribocorrosion is a material degradation process due to the combined effect of corrosion and wear. The name tribocorrosion expresses the underlying disciplines of tribology and corrosion. Tribology is concerned with the study of friction, lubrication and wear (its name comes from the Greek "tribo" meaning to rub) and corrosion is concerned with the chemical and electrochemical interactions between a material, normally a metal, and its environment. As a field of research tribocorrosion is relatively new, but tribocorrosion phenomena have been around ever since machines and installations are being used.
Wear is a mechanical material degradation process occurring on rubbing or impacting surfaces, while corrosion involves chemical or electrochemical reactions of the material. Corrosion may accelerate wear and wear may accelerate corrosion. One then speaks of corrosion accelerated wear or wear accelerated corrosion. Both these phenomena, as well as fretting corrosion (which results from small amplitude oscillations between contacting surfaces) fall into the broader category of tribocorrosion. Erosion-corrosion is another tribocorrosion phenomenon involving mechanical and chemical effects: impacting particles or fluids erode a solid surface by abrasion, chipping or fatigue while simultaneously the surface corrodes.
Tribocorrosion occurs in many engineering fields. It reduces the life-time of pipes, valves and pumps, of waste incinerators, of mining equipment or of medical implants, and it can affect the safety of nuclear reactors or of transport systems. On the other hand, tribocorrosion phenomena can also be applied to good use, for example in the chemical-mechanical planarization of wafers in the electronics industry or in metal grinding and cutting in presence of aqueous emulsions. Keeping this in mind, we may define tribocorrosion in a more general way independently of the notion of usefulness or damage or of the particular type of mechanical interaction: Tribocorrosion concerns the irreversible transformation of materials or of their function as a result of simultaneous mechanical and chemical/electrochemical interactions between surfaces in relative motion.
Official source
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