Abstract: The line contact pairs widely exist in machine elements, most of them work under the elastic hydrodynamic lubrication condition. In order to study the influence of microcavities on the tribological properties of line contact friction pairs and the correlation between 3D surface characterization parameters and the tribological characteristic, the technology of laser surface texturing is introduced to control microcavity’s area density, depth and distance. Four disc specimens are made, which have the same surface roughness, but the area density of microcavity are 7%, 14%, 21% and 28% respectively. The surface of the specimens are scanned by Talyrsurf CCI Lite and characterized by ISO25178. A series of frictional experiments under line contact with different sliding-rolling ratio, different load，different rotational speed conditions are conducted on a self-modified JPM-1 two-disc tribo-tester. The results show that the micro structure characteristics of surface topography have a significant influence on the frictional characteristic of the line contact pairs, the correlation between friction and volume parameter and feature parameter is given, and meanwhile, the micro structure characteristics of surface topography have different effects on friction under different working conditions and different sliding-rolling ratio.

Key words: Characterization, Line contact, Microcavities, Sliding-rolling ratio, Surface topography