Tribology in metal

working
Presented By :
Pratik Kalaskar [504010]
Mitank Kapadia [504011]
Parag Khanzode[504012]

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 1

 WHY TRIBOLOGY IN METAL WORKING
• In all forming operations dimensions and surface finish of the products are of utmost
importance.
• The customer requirements are constantly increasing and the metal forming operations
must consequently get better to meet the needs on the market.
• It does not matter if the product is a forged bearing steel to be used in trucks, a cold rolled
high strength steel sheet to be used in car bodies or a drawn wire to be used in springs – all
products need to have both dimension and surface finish within the tolerance specification.
• Basically, forming include three parts – forming conditions excluded – that may be changed;
work material, tool and (possibly) lubricant.
• In the interface between work material and tool, the conditions are very aggressive with –
generally or locally – high temperatures and pressures.
• The surfaces will be worn in various ways and this will change the conditions in the process.
• Consequently, the surface finish as well as the dimensions of the formed product may
change and in the end, the product will not fulfil the requirements of the customer.
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• Steel sheet for car bodies, for example, might get a surface finish that does not live up to the
expectations of a shiny new car that all customers want.
• An even worse scenario might be if the surface finish or dimensions of a bearing steel
prohibit the bearing to function in the way it is meant to do.
• Hence, the tool of the forming operation should manage to be used during a long time in a
stable process, i.e. it should not be heavily worn or scratch or contaminate the counter work
material surface.
• This puts high demands on the tool material and there may also be a need for a lubricant in
the working contact.
• Further, friction plays an important role on energy consumption so by lowering friction, the
environmental impact might be reduced.
• Therefore, research and development in regard to wear of the forming tools and
consequently tribology are of great interest.

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 3

 The importance of tribological considerations in metal forming
processes
• Affecting tool and die life
• Material flow during forming
• Work piece integrity
• Surface finish
• The relationship of the lubricant to the machine elements
• Cost considerations
• Energy conservation

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 4

 Forging
• Forging means mainly forming by using localised compressive forces and can be made either
hot or cold.
• Components produced by forging are stronger than equivalent cast or machined parts.
• The control of friction in different parts of the die-workpiece interfaces is done so that
1. die filling can be carried out properly
2. to reduce forging loads.
• Forging includes many different kinds of processes, from made by hand to highly effective
industrial machines.
• Products made by hot forging are pinions, crankshafts, rolls etc. while cold forging are made
on smaller components – usually less than 50 kg – such as screws, nuts and small junction
details.
• Hot forging and cold forging are two different metal forming processes that deliver similar
results.

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 Metal Forming
• To understand how tribology influences metal forming two concepts have to be analyzed:
what is friction and how lubrication can lead to sound processes.
Friction
• Most of metal forming processes present at least one moving tool in respect to the
workpiece surface.
• The contact pressure in the interface tool-workpiece is always very high in order to plasticize
the workpiece material and consequently define the product shape, often with intricate
details and significant change of overall dimensions.
• The effects of the high contact pressure can be enhanced by the topography of the surfaces,
especially of the workpiece, and by the high local temperatures usually found in metal
forming.
• The influence of the friction on the tools wear and products surface quality is more
pronounced in processes like hot forging and hot extrusion which present a difficult
entrapment of the lubricant into the deformation zone.

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• Otherwise, processes like wire drawing and sheet stamping present low friction coefficients
because of the light deformations, relatively low temperatures and a plenty and available
source of lubricant constantly dragged and entrapped between tools and workpiece surface.
• In some processes like sheet hot rolling and cross-wedge-rolling friction is necessary despite
all the consequent problems it causes.
• For instance, rolling is not possible if the friction coefficient is less than a minimum value, as
it can be seen in Fig. high coefficients cause an excessive increase of the specific pressure,
while a small coefficient tends to move the neutral section, where occurs the transition
from backward to forward slip, to the exit of the arc of contact, and therefore the plate
tends to backward slip without rolling.

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 7

 Lubrication
• Like in other forming processes and industrial applications, lubricants are used in metal
forming to keep apart two surfaces with relative motion in order to minimize friction, and
consequently the heat generation and the wear of the surfaces in contact.
• The correct choice of the lubricant and lubrication conditions depends on several factors
such as processing temperature and velocity, physical and chemical compatibility of the
lubricants and tools and workpiece materials, and on how easy is to apply and to remove
the lubricant, e.g., for some stamped products used in the food industry it is not allowed the
presence of contaminants common in industrial lubricants, and in this case fine polymers
coatings are used instead fluid lubricants

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 Four groups of lubricants are used in metal forming processes
• Fluids with a large viscosity range, from the light mineral oils to synthetic greases, which
form a continuous film and promote a hydrodynamic lubrication;
• Emulsions with appropriate compositions which reacts chemically with the tools and
workpiece generating very thin films and establishing a boundary lubrication
• Organic materials with additives for extreme pressures which reacts with the tools and
workpiece to form compound layers at the contact interface;
• Solids like graphite, glass, boron nitride and molybdenum disulfide, used to separate the
tools and workpiece surfaces.

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• Figure shows four different lubrication regimes which may be present at the tool-workpiece
interface.
• These regimes depend on process variables like tool and workpiece surface roughness,
lubricant viscosity and compressibility, temperature, velocities and deformation.
• In hydrodynamic lubrication the surfaces are completely separated by a lubricant film (Fig.a)
many times thicker than the roughness of both surfaces, and than the molecular size of the
lubricant.

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 10

 Wire Drawing
• Drawing is a process where a, usually cylindrical, material (wire, rod, pipe) is reduced in
cross-section by being drawn through a so called drawing die.
• Drawing is mainly a cold working process.
• The process is highly dependent on good lubrication.
• For material with larger cross-section diameter solid lubricants – metal soaps – are used (dry
drawing), while for smaller diameters fluid lubricants are used (wet drawing).
• A common product made by drawing is wire.
• Wires of different steel grades with a diameter down to 0.01 mm are drawn

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 11

• Wire drawing is a cold work production process in which wires of desired diameters with
low tolerance and smooth surfaces for various applications are produced by pulling the wire
through on or a series of reducing dies, see Figure.

Schematic drawing of a drawing die, with the different areas marked and numbered as 1-4.

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 12

 Wire drawing dies
Cemented carbide, showing a combination of high hardness, sufficient
toughness and excellent wear resistance, is today the most frequently used
drawing die material in steel wire drawing applications.
The drawing die contains four areas, which are schematically illustrated in
Figure 4. The areas and their different functions are:
• 1. Bell (Entry cone): Provides pressure in the lubrication and consequently
improves the possibilities to good lubrication of the material.
• 2. Reduction angle (Drawing cone): Constitutes the actual tool and is the
area where the plastic deformation takes place.
• 3. Bearing: Stabilises the process and improves the service life of the draw-
ing die.
• 4. Back relief (Exit cone): Improves the strength of the drawing die and
consequently reduces the risk of crack initiation because of tensile stress.
Also constitutes a smooth transition when the wire leaves the die.

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 Different Zones Illustrating Important Coating/Substrate System
Properties Affecting The Tribological Performance

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 Rolling
Friction
• Rolling is not possible if the friction coefficient is less than a minimum value .
• High coefficients cause an excessive increase of the specific pressure, while a small coefficient tends
to move the neutral section to the exit of the arc of contact.
• Due to this the transition from backward to forward slip occurs and therefore the plate tends to
backward slip without rolling.

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 15

Lubrication
• The surface finish of the strip depends primarily on the mechanism of lubrication that is in
effect (mixed-film type giving a brighter finish than by hydrodynamic lubrication) and roll
surface finish.
• Under severe conditions lubricant breakdown can occur, resulting in roll pickup and galling
of the strip.
• Roll wear may take place by various mechanisms such as adhesive, abrasive, thermal
fatigue, and spalling.

April 13, 2019 MIT WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY, Pune. (India) 16

 Extrusion
• Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile. A material is
pushed through a die of the desired cross-section.
• The two main advantages of this process over other manufacturing processes are its ability
to create very complex cross-sections, and to work materials that are brittle, because the
material only encounters compressive and shear stresses.
• It also forms parts with an excellent surface finish.
• Extrusion is mainly a hot working process where the material is pressed through a die.
• This process is used to produce long products with both circular cross-sections (rod, pipe) as
well as complicated profiles (different beam types).
• When steel is extruded some kind of lubrication is used to lower the forces and the risk of
surface cracks.
• Conventionally cast steel is commonly hot rolled instead of extruded but powder metallurgy
steel, such as stainless steel pipes, can be extruded

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• The main concerns in cold extrusion are the high level of sresses involved and, in hot
extrusion, the reduced die life due to temperature and ineffective lubrication.
• In hydrostatic extrusion, the fluid in the chamber is believed to serve as a supply of lubricant
for the die whose viscosity increases greatly with pressure.

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