The water content of hydrogel, and its evaporation during the wear tests would make gravimetric messurements inaccurate. Some authors have dried the sample before and after each test to eliminate the effect of water content and report the polymer mass loss, however they can not control the material loss due to dissolution of hydrgel constituents during rehydration process which takes place just before each test. Can anyone tell me what is the best and most accurate method to quantify the wear of hydrogel samples?
In my opinion, it is very important, to know, what is the hydrogel application you need? Then, you can try the same condition, using the abrasive or sliding method or another condition. It is not care the hydrogel hydrophilicity. That behavior is something natural.
Depending on the hydrogel physical properties you may go for atomic force microscope (AFM) equipped with a water container, and measure the tribological properties in real-time with no need for drying/rehydration. There might be other options like nano-tribometer (NTR2) and reciprocating friction tester.
Can you give what you're researching? Swollen polymer, maximal swollen polymer? What kind of wear do you mean?
Thanks for the answers, the purpose of wear volume determination is to compare the values of generated wear for the hydrogel samples with other common materials for the specific application that it is proposed for. With AFM, we can measure the COF, but I am not sure if the wear volume can be measured as well (@ ALi Nematollahzadeh) I am actually not concerned about finding the most proper method required for the application, but how to measure wear volume, after the test, let`s say after sliding wear test on swollen hydrogel with x% water content ( @ Carlos Figueroa Hernández )
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