Wear of materials is the major cause of material wastage and loss of performance. Friction, which occurs during wear process, causes energy dissipation. In order to evaluate the friction and wear characteristics of various tribo test devices are used. The novel pin-on-disk tribo testing device developed in the laboratory is capable of testing materials under various wear mechanisms like adhesive and abrasive mechanisms and various environments like elevated temperature, aqueous or corrosive medium with fresh or repeated contact conditions.

The developed device is capable studying the contact behavior of the different materials under contact with repeated (similar to conventional devices) or new contact conditions.The coefficient of friction and wear loss in the specimens can be monitored online using the high precision load cell and non contact displacement sensors respectively. Tribo tests can be conducted at various normal loads upto 60 N and varying sliding velocities. The tribometer is capable of evaluating the tribological characteristics of metals, polymers, composites and ceramics.