A new apparatus has been designed and constructed to allow studies of the synergistic relationships between corrosion and wear. The apparatus permits corrosion rates and electrochemical polarization data to be determined while a specimen is subjected to constant preselected values of contact pressure and interfacial sliding velocity. The system is sufficiently flexible to allow virtually any material combination to be studied in virtually any corrosive medium over a wide range of contact pressures and interfacial velocities.
One important application of this apparatus lies in the field of biomaterials science, and specifically in the characterization of materials intended for use as synthetic orthopedic joints in the human body. For example, an artificial total-hip implant must function properly over a long period of time in a highly corrosive medium while simultaneously being subjected to wear. The implant may undergo degradation by the corrosion process alone, by the mechanical wear process alone, and/or...
