Effect of laser texturing bulges on tribological properties of 316L stainless steel

Abstract

The laser surface texture process will inevitably produce the edge of material surface texture bulges. Currently, laser processing bulges are generally polished directly, but this method ignores its impact on the friction pairs. In this paper, the tribological properties of polished and unpolished textured surfaces were investigated under dry friction, oil lubrication, and seawater lubrication conditions using three shapes of texture (grooves, square pits, and round pits) prepared on the surface of 316L stainless steel. The results show that the polished surface of 316L stainless steel texture increases wears, and the friction mechanism is mainly adhesive wear, while the unpolished surface of the texture has less wear, and the friction mechanism is mainly abrasive wear. The method and principle of using machining bulges to improve the wear resistance of friction pairs are discussed to address the differences in the tribological performance of entire friction pairs due to the influence of machining bulges of different shapes of texture.

Effect of acid erosion on the tribological performance of surface texture prepared with laser processing

“…The wear width, wear depth and wear rate value of the surface texture with acid corrosion were 439.52 μm, 4.22 μm and 5.38 μm 3 /s, respectively. It can be seen that the initial sample surface has highest wear amount under oil lubrication condition and the textured surface after corrosion has the lowest amount of surface wear (Wang et al , 2023; Li et al , 2023).…”

“…However, the textured samples after corrosion in hydrochloric acid solution obtain a relatively uniform and complete textured morphology. The better textured morphology can reduce the interfacial contact area and improve the friction coefficient and wear amount at the contact interface (Wang et al , 2023; Li et al , 2023). Under oil lubrication conditions, the textured sample surface obtains a better texture morphology after corrosion, which results in a more adequate storage distribution of lubricant at the textured interface.…”

“…The experimental results indicated that the friction coefficient and wear rate of the specimen with bulges were lower compared to that of the polished specimen, which may be attributed to the reduction of the contact area. Li et al (2023) investigated the tribological properties of polished and unpolished textured surfaces of the 316-L stainless steel under dry friction, oil lubrication and seawater lubrication conditions. The results show that the wear amount of the polished surface is larger than the unpolished surface and a completely opposite result is obtained for the friction coefficient.…”

Effect of lubricant infiltration into the groove-like surface texture on the friction response of the textured stainless-steel contact surface

“…Stainless steel has become a widely employed material and holds a core position in the industry [1,2]. Surface texturing has been extensively employed to enhance the tribology performances of stainless-steel friction pairs by designing optimized textures on stainless-steel surfaces.…”

“…It is found in the study that textures could significantly enhance the tribology performances of the seals. Since then, various surface textures have been investigated and different surface-texturing techniques, such as electrochemical machining [5], shot blasting [6], embossing [7] and laser surface texturing (LST) [1,2], were used for tribology applications. Among them, LST is widely employed for its high processing efficiency and precision [1,2].…”