TRIBOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF CLOSED-SHAPED GEOMETRIES GENERATED WITH LASER SURFACE TEXTURING UNDER SLIDING CONDITIONS

Machining is one of the most common industrial techniques to produce components: it consists of removing material from a workpiece to a specific size or shape. One drawback of machining processes is that they tend to generate friction, heat and wear on cutting tools, which is usually associated with a low tool lifetime: this comes with high costs and low productivity, which in turn generates economic and ecological issues. One possible solution for these drawbacks is laser surface texturing (LST), a type of surface engineering technique which consists of creating micro or nano-cavities on the surface of the material to exposed to high-pressure contacts with the purpose of reducing friction and wear. LST parameters, such as geometry, density and depth, play an important role on tribological performance. This research focused on comparing and evaluating the coefficient of friction (COF) and wear of different closed-shaped textured geometries generated by LST, which included dimples or circles, hexagons and “benzene-shaped” figures. The purpose was to determine which of these three geometries presents best tribological performance under applied pressures. Tribological testing was performed with a T-05 block-on-ring tribotester under sliding conditions applying constant pressure (50 MPa) at 800 rpm and using a formulated commercial lubricant. Blocks of 1018 steel blocks were textured with the selected geometries. The results show that for under the selected testing conditions, hexagons and benzenes reduced COF by 20% and 34%, respectively, while hexagons had the lowest wear compared to untextured samples (70%). In future studies and applications, these results could potentially increase the lifetime of cutting tools employed for milling processes, which could reduce production costs and ecological impact.