Title screen

[References: 14 tit.]

Friction-generated heat is an important factor that determines the stability of sliding friction conditions and thus has to be taken into account especially when using ultrafine-grained materials for tribological applications. Thermal stability of these materials under friction sliding conditions must be studied and the first approach here is to determine the temperature distributions below the worn surfaces. For this purpose, we used an IR thermal imaging camera attached to a tribological setup and three materials with different heat conductivity values: AISI 321 stainless steel, 5052 aluminum alloy and C11000 copper as specimens. The results show that even if the measured temperatures were below the standard recrystallization start temperatures, the recrystallization still was feasible due to severe friction-induced subsurface deformation.