| Summary: | Lubricated poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) and polyamide (PA46)–steel tribosystems were investigated. They show a complex but systematic transition behavior from static to boundary friction, to dynamic friction or to mixed-lubrication. Nonstandard macroscopic oscillatory tribometry as well as gliding experiments were carried out. A previous study showed that the surface and interfacial energies of PEEK, lubricant and steel can indicate trends in the tribological behavior. In the current study, these findings are confirmed for PA46 and a wider range of lubricants. It was shown that a reversal of the order of the work of spreading of two lubricants by switching from PEEK to PA46 as polymer component in the tribological system also resulted in a reversal of the coefficient of friction (COF) at low gliding velocities for these systems. The adhesion threshold of PA46 with the non-spreading lubricants water, glycerine, a water–glycerine mixture, ethylene glycol and poly-1-decene decreased with increasing solving tendency of the lubricants in contrast to the previous results for spreading lubricants for PEEK. Furthermore, the onset of forced wetting was studied for lubricants with different surface and interfacial energies and viscosities η. In general, a 1/η dependency was observed for the velocity which marks the onset of forced wetting. This agrees with theoretical models.
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