Development of the sliding frication tester under vacuum and cryogenic environment

In order to investigate the maternal and lubrication of the moving parts of a space probe, a sliding frication tester was developed under vacuum and cryogenic environment. The tester includes the following four parts: driving system, loading system, measuring system and refrigerating system. A computer program was also developed to acquire and record the experimental data. Friction coefficients of component pairs of material GCr15-GCr15 were tested indifferent environments on the tester. The results show that in terms of the friction coefficient and life of the friction pair under vacuum and low temperature environment, the pairs with vacuum grease are far better than that without grease. The tester meets the design requirements.