Wear Behaviour of Nanostructured Polymer-Based Safety Films on Soda-Lime Glass

The wear behaviour of bare and polymer-coated soda-lime glass specimens sliding against 440C stainless steel counterfaces was investigated with the aid of a pin-on-disk apparatus. The selected polymeric coatings were commercially supplied safety films, which are nowadays extensively applied on glass in the automotive and construction industry. One of their main failures is the degradation of their properties due to wear. In this work, the frictional behaviour of these coatings on glass were evaluated and compared to those of bare soda-lime glass. Correlations have been also made between the worn surfaces and weight loss in order to investigate the effect of wear conditions (speed, load) on the wear behaviour of these tribosystems. In addition, during the dry wear of soda-lime glass sliding against stainless steel counterfaces, the dominant wear mechanisms were found to be localized adhesion and abrasion, whereas, in the case of the multilayered polymeric coatings localized adhesion, deformation and tearing were observed.