Study on Wear Mode of Silicon Nitride Balls in Lapping Process

To understand the mechanism involved in the lapping process of the silicon nitride balls, the wear mode is investigated in this paper. The abrasion tests were performed on a ball-plate wear test apparatus with different loads (0~2N/ball) and slurry concentrations (5%wt~30%wt W20 B4C3). The abraded surface is observed by optical telescope. A wear-mode map, which defines the regimes for two-body abrasion or three-body abrasion dominating in the micro-scale abrasion test, is plotted with two axes: load and concentration of abrasive. An empirical formula for the wear mode transition is adopted to calculate the transition point S*, which can then used to predict the wear mode in lapping process of silicon nitride ball.