Experimental design on high-speed sliding wear

This paper recounts research that develops, conducts, and analyzes an experimental design characterizing wear rates of various materials sliding at high speeds along an AISI 4340 steel rail. The work supports Holloman Air Force Base’s engineering of a more wear-resistant rocket slipper for their high-speed test track. A design of experiments approach is used to systematically identify and evaluate potential slipper attributes that mitigate wear based on a heat transfer model. Results include recommendations of slipper materials that theoretically perform similar to or better than the baseline Vascomax®C300 maraging steel as well as statistical evaluation of the finite element analysis heat transfer model of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s pin-on-disk rig.