Jul 26, 2016
ASTM Committee G02 Celebrates Half a Century
There's hardly any time to spare
When estimating costs of wear;
With millions added every day,
We must keep harmful wear at bay.
So writes Peter J. Blau, longtime ASTM member and unofficial poet laureate of ASTM International Committee G02 on Wear and Erosion, which will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2014.
Blau, who has written and compiled limericks and other short verse about wear and erosion as a hobby throughout his career in tribology, sums up the importance of G02 by saying, "Sooner or later everyone has a wear problem. Lacking a global, fundamental model that can predict every type of behavior based only on material properties, testing is essential for the development of wear-resistant materials and surface treatments."Frank Heymann, one of the founders of G02, says that the committee was approved by the ASTM board of directors on Sept. 17, 1963, with the first meeting being held the following February. Originally known as Committee G02 on Erosion by Cavitation or Impingement, G02 was renamed Wear and Erosion in 1972.
According to Blau, G02 standards cover several important wear situations and enable progress in the science and application of materials technology to improve the longevitiy of surface damage-critical systems like bearings, gears, seals, sliding bearings and other surfaces that can be exposed to abrasion or erosion.
Key G02 standards include the following.
- G65, Test Method for Measuring Abrasion Using the Dry Sand/Rubber Wheel Apparatus. This test method, originally approved in 1980 and under the jurisdiction of Subcommittee G02.30 on Abrasive Wear, concerns abrasion by sand, one of the most industrially important concerns in fields such as mining, farming, material transport and bulk material processing.
- G76, Test Method for Conducting Erosion Tests by Solid Particulate Impingement Using Gas Jets. The standard covers erosion test for gas jets, which create wear issues in mining, piping and bulk material transport, as well as in military and aerospace applications, including aircraft canopies, air foil coatings and turbine blades.
- G99, Test Method for Wear Testing with a Pin-on-Disk Apparatus, is a popular wear test used by developers of coatings, films and surface treatments.
- G115, Guide for Measuring and Reporting Friction Coefficients, covers information to assist in selecting methods for measuring frictional properties of materials.
As for the future of G02 and its standards, Blau says, "I would like to see more extension of the G02 standards to the growing field of coatings and surface treatments, and to applications like micro-pitting of gear, biotribology (implants) and tribo-corrosion (wear and corrosion synergism)."
Blau describes the following ways that industry can benefit in many ways from the work of G02. For example, the biomedical community can use G02 wear testing experience in the development of new implant materials. Also, high temperature challenges to alleviate fretting or sliding contact in jet engines and every conversion systems could be met by wear testing standards.
"These are difficult and expensive testing problems to tackle, but they are also important in enabling new technology," says Blau.
As Blau notes in the final verse of his 50th anniversary poem:
Five productive decades passed
Yet G02's standards seem to last;
Now celebration is in store
As G02 plans for fifty more!
Photo caption
November / December 2013
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