Standard Methods Of Abrasion Testing

Today, there are several different types of apparatuses for testing abrasion resistance. They have evolved over time to include different kinds of loading conditions and materials, in order to be truer and closer to real conditions. Their results are not mutually www.qinsun.com 36 Abrasion Resistance of Materials comparable and often opposing results have been reported using different instruments. Lately, resistance to wear has been most common tested by Martindale, while the processes of circular wear with the tangential direction by Schopper have been mostly abandoned. However, testing abrasion resistance by Schopper has its advantages and disadvantages. The use of SiC paper provides intensive wear at lower number of cycles and tangential contact sample with the abrading material. 

When using the Martindale method, the sample moves according to the Lissajous figure, standard wool fabric being abraded over the entire surface and this certainly contributes to getting reliable results. This method is ideal for everyday fabrics, but when it comes to the fabrics in the high performance fabrics group, the method can be modified, which we discussed before [Somogyi et al. 2008]. Why is this important? It is well known that a textile material with high resistance to abrasion, such as Cordura®, can stand 100 thousand rubs by Martindale without a mass loss or specimen breakdown. Obviously, this kind of material will abrade a woven wool fabric, and not the other way around. 

Thus, the question arises whether the determination of Cordura abrasion resistance, or some other the similar high performance fabric, using the Martindale methods, is suitable or the methods should be modified in order to obtain significant results? In addition to the modification of Martindale in the manner described before , some modifications of standard methods of testing abrasion resistance by Martindale are also possible, all of them aiming at obtaining significant results.