Forming quality and wettability of surface texture on CuSn10 fabricated by laser powder bed fusion

Abstract

Surface texture has aroused widespread interest due to its role in controlling friction, reducing wear, and improving lubrication performance. As one of the most promising green processing technologies, Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) can manufacture complex structures, effectively reducing manufacturing constraints and significantly increasing structural design freedom. In this study, the powder bed model was established by numerical simulation, and the influence of different energy inputs on the morphology and characteristics of the molten pool was investigated. Based on this, the optimal forming process parameters of CuSn10 were selected. In addition, LPBF is used to process different textures (square texture, circular texture, hemispheric texture, and triangle texture) on the surface of CuSn10. The surface texture’s structural accuracy, surface morphology, and wettability were studied using a profiler, scanning electron microscope, and contact angle measuring instrument, respectively. The research results show that the accuracy of the square texture structure is the closest to the original design model among all the samples and the hemispheric texture surface does not have severe powder adhesion; as a result, it has the lowest average surface roughness of 5.58 µm. However, the triangle texture has the worst formation quality. It was revealed that the stepping effect mechanism of irregularly formed surfaces is the most important reason to cause this phenomenon. In addition, the maximum contact angle of the square texture is 85.59°, which is 15.76% higher than that of the triangle texture.