Papers by Author: J.J. Zhen

Abstract: 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.