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Top1. Introduction
In recent years, non-ferrous alloys have played an important role in the manufacturing of most commodities where brass finds more uses. Brass is an alloy of 65% Cu and 35% Zn (Bravo et al., 2014; Taha et al., 2012). Several types of brass with different characteristics are formed depending on the amount of Zn element and Cu taken up. The main uses of brass are radiator tubes, hydraulic brake tubes, plain bearings, carburetors, fasteners, and marine components (Kong et al., 2003; Zhang et al. 2013). In general, the brass is used to manufacture the gears, bearings, valves, braces, brackets, base plates. These machine components are usually affected by the friction and wear during the operating conditions. Friction is the sole factor to wear the component. Brass properties can be improved by a variety of cold working processes. However, hot forming is also very important in this perspective. Almost all brass has excellent corrosion resistance, high formability, and a relatively low melting point. Among the various types of brass, yellow brass has excellent strength, higher ductility, and excellent casting properties needed to make ornaments (Kato et al., 2015). In a real application, brass components are subjected to mechanical friction and have a polishing effect.
Wear is a type of material removal from the contact surface due to the relative movement between two mating parts (Konkova et al., 2015; Kalita et al., 2017). Component wear is a function of applied load, operating temperature, velocity, alloy hardness, mechanical impact duration, atmospheric exposure, and the presence of foreign matter. Wear is a major engineering problem which directly costs 1-4% of Gross National Product (GNP) loss in terms of mechanical parts. Therefore, it is necessary to study the wear behavior of brass and its alloys (Shah et al. 2007; Tang et al., 2011; Mousavi et al., 2017). Tribological behavior like wear rate, wear resistance, and coefficient of friction have played a major role in the science of material removal (Filippov et al., 2017; Kim et al. 2012 & Banerjee et al.2021). Dry slip wear testing is the best experimental method for investigating wear behavior in many structural applications. However, in order to investigate the wear behavior of the material in detail, it is necessary to carry out a series of experiments using the conventional one-to-one method. The tribological tests can be performed with or without the use of lubricant. Various types of lubricating oils are available worldwide, including mineral oils, synthetic oils, refined oils and vegetable oils. Most lubricants available on the market are based on petroleum derived mineral oils and are not environmentally adaptable due to their toxicity and biodegradability (Salih et al., 2012; Adhvaryu et al., 2005). Therefore, vegetable oils can play an important role in replacing petroleum lubricants, as they have many advantages over base lubricants, such as renewables, environmental friendliness, biodegradability, and reduced toxicity (Shahabuddin et al., 2012). Brass is having excellent properties but don’t have wide range of engineering applications because of its some drawbacks. Various experimental works reported in the literature has suggested that its friction and wear rate are very high at small load and less rpm and seasonal cracking is also a very big drawback which limits its application (Mousavi SE et al., 2017). So, its use on higher load applications and on those fields where more surface contact is involved, is still a matter of further investigations. Although brass have been reported as an unsuitable choice for moving components due to its high wear rate, but more studies are needed the support the related facts.