Dry Sliding Friction and Wear of SnPb-Solder Affected Copper against Stainless Steel Counter Surface

This paper reports the wear behavior of Cu, high Cu-Sn alloy, high Cu-Pb alloy and high Cu-Sn-Pb alloy under dry sliding at ambient conditions. These four materials were chosen for the wear resistance characterization of SnPb-solder affected old/scraped copper (high Cu-Sn-Pb alloy) to explore its reusing potentials. Wear tests were conducted using a pin-on-disk tribometer with the applied load of 20 N for the sliding distance up to 2772 m at the sliding speed of 0.513 ms-1. The applied load was also changed to observe its effect. The investigation reveals that the presence of a small amount of Sn increased the hardness and improved the wear resistance of Cu, while a similar amount of Pb in Cu reduced the hardness but improved the wear resistance. The general perception of ‘the harder the wear resistant’ was found to match partially with the results of Cu, Cu-Sn alloy and Cu-Sn-Pb alloy. Coefficient of friction (COF) values revealed non-linear gradual increasing trends at the initial stage and after a certain sliding distance COF values of all four sample materials became almost steady. SnPb-solder affected Cu demonstrated its COF to be in between that of Cu-Pb alloy and Cu-Sn alloy with the maximum COF value of 0.533.