Determination of the physico-chemical interactions between liquid and solid substances is a key technological factor in many industrial processes in metallurgy, electronics or the aviation industry, where technological processes are based on soldering/brazing technologies. Understanding of the bonding process, reactions between materials and their dynamics enables to make research on new materials and joining technologies, as well as to optimise and compare the existing ones. The paper focuses on a wetting force measurement method and its practical implementation in a laboratory stand – an integrated platform for automatic wetting force measurement at high temperatures. As an example of using the laboratory stand, an analysis of Ag addition to Cu-based brazes, including measurement of the wetting force and the wetting angle, is presented.

Serious damage to the inner rim of the rear twin wheel in one dump truck was noted during the operation of the fleet performing transport tasks. It was a drive wheel, and its damage occurred while driving with a load exceeding the permissible value. The examination of selected fragments of the damaged rim surface was conducted visually as well as using a digital microscope with a portable head. The measurements of the Vickers hardness and microscopic observations of the material structure of the sample cut along the thickness of the rim disk were carried out. The drive torque loading of the twin wheels of the tipper-truck rear axle, under their mating with different kinds of road roughness and under various vertical loads of the wheels was calculated. An analysis of stress distributions in the rim modelled using the Finite Element Method was also conducted for several possible scenarios of wheel loading. The damage to the rim was caused by simultaneous action of several factors, such as overloading the car, poor condition of the tires, loading the drive wheel by a part of the vehicle weight and the driving torque, and hitting a wheel on a cavity in a dirt road, causing a temporary relief of one of the tires on a twin wheel.