Coupling behavior between adhesive and abrasive wear mechanism of aero-hydraulic spool valves

Abstract Leakage due to wear is one of the main failure modes of aero-hydraulic spool valves. This paper established a practical coupling wear model for aero-hydraulic spool valves based on dynamic system modelling theory. Firstly, the experiment for wear mechanism verification proved that adhesive wear and abrasive wear did coexist during the working process of spool valves. Secondly coupling behavior of each wear mechanism was characterized by analyzing actual time-variation of model parameters during wear evolution process. Meanwhile, Archard model and three-body abrasive wear model were utilized for adhesive wear and abrasive wear, respectively. Furthermore, their coupling wear model was established by calculating the actual wear volume. Finally, from the result of formal test, all the required parameters for our model were obtained. The relative error between model prediction and data of pre-test was also presented to verify the accuracy of model, which demonstrated that our model was useful for providing accurate prediction of spool valve’s wear life.