CHAPTER TWO

Fundamentals of
the theory of
damages
Course: Maintenance of Machinery ( McEng 5142)
Instructor: Mesfin S. (Ph.D)

McEng 5142 1
2.1 INTRODUCTION
✓ Damages are causes for the loss of function
ability or workability of a means of
production, if proper action is not taken
against them.
✓ Even with optimum design and operation
conditions, damages are unavoidable.
✓ Thus, damages are the reasons for the
existence of a maintenance organization.

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CLASSIFICATION OF DAMAGES
Processes Reducing
Use-Value

Technological Processes Technical-Economical

(Change of State) Processes

Obsolocence

Wear Overload Others

(fire, pest, etc.)

Corrosion Wear Fatigue Aging

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Reasons for Damages

✓ Objective reasons:
▪ Those are damages caused by operational
processes and environmental causes.

✓ Subjective reasons :
▪ These are caused by failure in design,
manufacturing, use, operation and
maintenance.
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Behavior of Damages
✓ Sudden behavior:
▪ use-value of equipment diminishes instantly, in other words,
sudden breakdown of equipment takes place.
✓ Continuous behavior:
▪ use-value of equipment decreases with time due to wear.
Behaviour

Behaviour

Time Time
Sudden behaviour Continuous behaviour
Use-value behaviour
Load behaviour
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2.2 Typical damages of equipment
2.2.1 Corrosion
 Corrosion is the destruction or deterioration of
materials by chemical or electrochemical reaction
with the environment. This includes the
destruction of metals in all types of atmospheres
and liquids, and at any temperature.
 Corrosion is usually superficial but it sometimes
is directed along grain boundaries or other lines
of weakness.

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The Process of Corrosion:
 Direct chemical Corrosion:

• limited to conditions involving highly corrosive

environments or high temperature or both.
Examples:
– Corrosion of metals left open in damp
environments and at high temperature;

– Metals in contact with strong acids or alkalis.

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… Cont’d
 Electrochemical Corrosion:
▪ is characterized by movement of metallic
ions in solutions.
Example:
▪ When zinc is placed in dilute hydrochloride
acid a vigorous reaction occurs, hydrogen
gas is evolved and zinc dissolves to form
zinc chloride.
▪ This reaction can be divided into the anodic
and cathode reactions. During metallic
corrosion, the rate of oxidation equals the
rate of reduction.
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Kinds of Corrosion
A. Surface Corrosion (Uniform attack)
▪ most common form of corrosion, manifest over
the entire exposed surface or over a large area.
▪ Surface is destroyed nearly parallel to the surface.
▪ Caused by influence of ambient conditions on
unprotected metal surfaces.
▪ Metal becomes thinner and eventually may fail.
▪ From the technical standpoint not of great
concern.
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… Cont’d
B. Pitting Corrosion:
▪ Pitting is one of the most destructive and insidious
forms of corrosion.
▪ Causes equipment failure because of perforation
with only a small percent weight loss of entire
equipment
▪ Difficult to detect because of their small size and
often are covered with corrosion products.
▪ Localized destruction of material (surface)
▪ It can take place below the surface affecting the
stresses (invisible).
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… Cont’d
c. Inter-crystalline Corrosion:
- Occurs at the grain boundary of metal alloys.
- Causes sudden crack.
d. Trans-crystalline Corrosion:
- Occurs through the grains of metal alloys.
e. Galvanic Corrosion (two-metal Corrosion)
₋ associated with the current of a galvanic cell made up of
two dissimilar metals.
₋ potential difference usually exists between two dissimilar
metals when they are immersed in a corrosive solution. If
these metals are placed in contact, the potential difference
produces electron flow between them and corrosion of
the less corrosion resistant metal is increased. The less
resistant metal becomes anodic and the more resistant
metal cathodic.
McEng 5142 11
Factors that stimulate corrosion
▪ Atmospheric corrosion is stimulated by damp
atmosphere, since a film of water is maintained on
the surface which is an essential condition for
corrosion.
▪ Oxygen dissolved in water.
▪ Acids, Acid gases in the atmosphere, Sulphur
compounds, Coke, Coal dust, etc.
▪ Salts that dissociate in water producing acid
reactions
▪ Contact of dissimilar metals

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… Cont’d

▪ Presence of depolarizing surfaces such as mill scale

▪ Non- uniformity within the metal
▪ Cold working process on metals results in increased
rate of attack by acids
▪ Fatigue stresses
▪ Rust may accelerate corrosion and cause pitting
▪ Corrosion on metals under stress is much more
severe than under ordinary conditions.

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Methods of Minimizing Corrosion
▪ Use of a coating of protective metal such as zinc,
tin, lead, etc
▪ Application of protective paints
▪ Rendering the surface of the metal passive
(immersing in nitric acid after it has been highly
poised immersing in fuming sulpheric acid)
Corrosion problems are pronounced, to a varying
degree, in:
- Steam generating plants,
- Equipment in chemical plants,
- Pipes, and
- Structures
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2.2.2 WEAR

• Tribology is the science and technology of

interacting surfaces in relative motion which
embraces the general concepts of all aspects of
the transmission and dissipation of energy.
• Friction, wear, lubrication come under tribology
• Wear is undesired change of surface of
machine components by the removal of little
particles caused by mechanical reasons. Mostly
wear is caused by friction of two mating parts.
McEng 5142 15
… Cont’d

Conditions that must be fulfilled:

▪ Pair of wear partners, consisting of a basic body
and a mating body.

▪ Relative motion between the contacting surfaces.

▪ A normal force between the basis and mating

bodies.

▪ Other factors.

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Relative motion:
• can be sliding, rolling, drilling. The amount of
motion, direction and time behavior affect the
resulting wear.
Normal force:
• magnitude, direction and time behavior (static or
dynamic) affects the resulting wear.
Intermediate materials:
• can be solid, liquid or gaseous. These materials are
mostly used in the form for lubricants.
Other factors that influence wear are:
• like the environmental conditions (temp., moisture,
presence of attacking gases,…) contaminating
materials ( chips, dust,).

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… Cont’d

Kinds of wear and tear

Depending on the motion we have
• Kinematics wear
• sliding
• rolling
• drilling
• mixed
• Static wear

• Impact wear
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… Cont’d
Depending on time behavior of wear we have:-
- Stationary wear: Constant wear intensity over time.
- Non-stationary wear: intensity depends on time.

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… Cont’d

Mechanisms of wear:
a. Stress interactions
- These are due to the combined action of
load forces and frictional forces

- Lead to wear processes namely:

surface fatigue, and abrasion.

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… Cont’d
i. Surface fatigue wear mechanisms
₋ These phenomena may occur mainly due to the
action of stresses in or below the surfaces
without needing a direct physical solid contact of
the surfaces under consideration
₋ The effect of fatigue wear is especially associated
with repeated stress cycling in rolling contact,
and is accompanied by the generation and
propagation of cracks
₋ Surface fatigue effects are observed to occur in
journal bearings
McEng 5142 21
… Cont’d

ii. Abrasive wear mechanisms

The effect of abrasion occurs in contact
situations, in which direct physical contact
between two surfaces is given, where one of
the surfaces is considerably harder than the
other. The harder surface causes wear of the
softer material.

McEng 5142 22
… Cont’d

b. Material interactions
o These are due to intermolecular forces
either between the interacting solid bodies
or between the interacting solid bodies and
the environmental atmosphere and/or the
interfacial medium
o Lead to wear processes described broadly
as tribo-chemical reactions and adhesion.

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i. Tribochemical wear mechanisms
In tribochemical wear the dynamic interactions
between the material components and the
environment determine the wear process, where the
environment is the third partner.

ii. Adhesive wear mechanisms

• Adhesion is the ability of atomic structures to hold
themselves together and form surface bonds with
other atoms or surfaces with which they come into
contact.
• The adhesive wear processes are initiated by the
interfacial adhesive junctions which form if solid
materials are in contact on an atomic scale. Material
is then transferred due to adhesive joint formation
which leads to rupture.McEng 5142 24
… Cont’d
Tribological Interactions

Stress Interactions Frictional Material Interactions

(Load, Frictional Forces) Heating (interatomic Forces)

Surface Fatigue Abrasion Tribochemical reactions Adhesion

Stress Cycles Micro-cutting Tribochemical films due Transferred material

Microstructural Changes Micro-ploughing to material/invironment due to adhesive joint
Micro-cracking interations formation and rapture
Crack Formation
Delamination

Material removal process

Fatigue Wear Abraded Wear Tribochemical Wear Adhesive Wear

Particles Particles Process Process
McEng 5142 25
… Cont’d
Wear Processes
a. Shearing process
Roughness points will be sheared off if the acting forces
are greater than the shear strength. This leads to the
reduction of roughness and increased percentage of
contact area which reduces energy concentration and
wear velocity.
b. Elastic deformation
Big surface roughness result in low percentage of contact
area and high energy concentration in contact point. This
may result in high local stresses. In the elastic range this
causes small flattening or bending of roughness points.
Repetition of this process will cause local fatigue of
material.
McEng 5142 26
… Cont’d

c. Plastic deformation
If the local stress produced exceeds the elastic
limit, plastic deformation takes place in flattening
and bending the material (no loss in mass).

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… Cont’d

Types of wear as related to lub application

Wear by Solid friction
▪ Solid friction occurs between the contacting
surfaces where there is no intermediate
material

▪ In relation to the surface roughness we find

wear process by shearing, plastic and elastic
deformation and heating of the surfaces.

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… Cont’d
Wear by liquid friction
o The two mating bodies are completely separated
from each other by intermediate material, mostly
a lubricant.
o Friction occurs in the lubricant, and wear is
influenced by load, relative velocity, temperature,
viscosity of lubricant, the lubricating gap

Wear by mixed friction

o Simultaneous action of solid + liquid friction,
cause by high roughness or high load for the
lubricating film.
o This results in metallic contact .
McEng 5142 29
… Cont’d

Lubricant

Liquid friction

Lubricant

Mixed friction
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 Classification of wear phenomena
Effective mechanisms
(individually or combined)
System Tribological Type of wear Surface Tribo-
structure action Adhesion Abrasion chemical
fatigue
(symbols) reactions
Solid sliding
- interfacial rolling
medium (full impact  
fluid film
separation)
- solid
Solid sliding sliding wear
- solid    
(with solid
friction,
boundary rolling
lubrication, rolling wear
mixed    
lubrication)

impact
impact wear
   

oscillation
freting wear
   

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Solid sliding
Solid sliding
- solid and sliding abrasion
particles 

sliding
sliding abrasion
(three body 
abrasion)

rolling
rolling abrasion
(three body 
abrasion)

Solid flow
- fluid with particle erosion
(erosion wear)   
particles
Solid flow
- gas with fluid erosion   
particles (erosion wear)
impact
impact erosion   
(erosion wear)

Solid flow
- fluid oscillation material erosion  
cavitation erosion
impact
drop erosion  
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 3. FATIGUE

 Fatigue is the failure (or reduction in strength) of a

material under fluctuating stresses, which are
repeated a very large number of times.
 Fatigue failure begins with a hair-line crack which
develops at a point of discontinuity in the material
(notches, groves, fillets,…).
 Once a small crack develops, it propagates under
load to cause failure.
 Components subjected to fluctuating forces must
be designed for fatigue conditions.
McEng 5142 33
… Cont’d
o Surface conditions, residual stresses due to metal
working processes or metal - treating processes, stress
concentration affect fatigue strength very much. Hence,
they should be considered properly at design stage.
o Fatigue strength (the endurance limit) of materials is
greatly decreased by the presence of a corroding
medium.
o Alternating stresses tend to cause considerable damage
to any protective film formed in the normal course of
action of a corrosive medium. Continual damage to this
film may be a source of the further development of
cracks which accelerate fatigue failure.
McEng 5142 The End ₪₪₪ 34