Design Approach and Structural Analysis for Development of a Micro-Wear Tester

Abstract

The tribological behavior of microsystems needs to be clearly understood in order to improve the reliability of precision components. For example, friction and wear phenomena pose serious problems in MEMS applications. As a first step to investigate the tribological behavior of such systems, an appropriate testing system must be acquired. In this work, a micro-wear tester based MEMS platform was designed. The main concern was to achieve a desirable range of horizontal displacement for the specimen holder and also to apply a normal force in the tens of µN range. The structural analysis of the micro-wear tester showed that the proposed design satisfied these requirements while maintaining the structural integrity.