Adam Szurdak

Manufacturing and Tribological Investigation of Hot Micro-Coined Lubrication Pockets

Friction and wear of lubricated machine elements can be reduced by the introduction of lubrication pockets produced by surface texturing. Different manufacturing methods can be taken into consideration whereas a forming process offers the possibility for mass production. Hot micro coining is a forming process, which allows manufacturing of surface textures with different shapes and dimensions into a flat and deformable material, e.g. seals made of steel. In this work hemispherical and ellipsoid pockets with a maximum depth of 100 µm have been embossed into stainless steel (AISI 304). To ensure that the used process parameters will not lead to tool damage, Finite Element simulations were performed and experimentally verified. First tribological experiments were conducted on a ball-on-disk tribometer in order to study the tribological properties of hemispherical structures with pockets depths of 50 and 100 µm. Different sliding velocities were applied to study the coefficient of friction and wear volume for different lubrication conditions. A comparison between coined and not‑coined specimens demonstrates that the micro coined surface textures lead to a significant reduction in the wear volume at boundary and mixed lubrication conditions.

Development and Experimental Verification of a New Roller-Coining Setup to Texture Flat and Curved Surfaces

Micro lubrication pockets decrease the frictional losses and improve the wear resistance of lubricated machine elements. Depending on the application, the pocket dimension and the area density (ratio of the projected pocket area to the non-textured area) must be optimized. Otherwise, the lubrication pockets might increase friction and wear. Besides the determination of the optimized texture, the production process needs to manufacture the pockets with high reproducibility and accuracy, since each deviation of the texture might reduce the improvement of the tribological properties. The goal of this work is to develop a new forming setup capable of decreasing the influence of deviations in the material, of the tool or due to a process inaccuracy ́s. Therefore, a roller-coining process based on a pneumatic system was developed to keep the forming force and thus the pocket dimension constant. This setup was as well used to texture the roller, since the manufacturing of a prominent micro texture on a curved surface with high tolerances is a difficult task for other texturing methods. The experimental verification of the setup showed that by using the pneumatic setup the standard deviation of the pocket depth was reduced by an average factor of 1.9.

Synergetic effect of laser patterning and micro coining for controlled lubricant propagation

In this study, the anisotropic spreading behavior of Poly-(alpha)-olefin oil (kinematic viscosity of 7.8 cSt at 100 °C) on stainless steel samples (AISI 403) having periodic, channel-like structures produced by hot micro-coining (periodicity of 400 μm and depth of 40 μm) as well as multi-scale structures (coining and laser patterning) was investigated. These results were compared to the behavior of periodic channels fabricated by direct laser interference patterning (periodicity of 5 μm and depth of 1 μm). The spreading behavior of a droplet (3 μl) was studied for a polished reference as well as for all modified surfaces and recorded by a digital light microscope. From this study, it can be concluded that the polished reference leads to an isotropic spreading behavior resulting from the stochastic surface roughness without any preferential orientation whereas all structured samples induce an anisotropic spreading behavior but with different degrees of anisotropy. The observed behavior can be well correlated with pinning induced by the grooves thus hindering the droplet propagation perpendicular to the grooves and the generation of capillary forces which favor the droplet movement along the grooves. It could be proved that the structural depth is a very desicive parameter with regard to the resulting spreading behavior. The multi-scale surface combining large structural depths and the steeper pattern geometry of the micro-coined surface with much smaller grooves of the laser-structure shows the largest anisotropic spreading behavior due to a stronger pinning and increased capillary forces.

Wear behavior of micro-coined steel surfaces under mixed lubrication:

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of hemispherical structures fabricated by hot micro-coining on the resulting wear performance. Hemispherical structures with different area densities (20 and 30 per cent), depths (50 and 100 µm) and diameters (100 and 200 µm) were fabricated by hot micro-coining on stainless steel samples. Design/methodology/approach The wear performance of these samples was studied using a ball-on-disk tribometer in rotational sliding mode using a normal load of 30 N and a fixed sliding velocity of 2 cm/s. Two different poly-(alpha)-olefin (PAO) oils without any additive having a kinematic viscosity of 4 and 40 cSt, were used to study the influence of the oil viscosity on the wear behavior. Findings Concerning the polished reference, an enlarged wear volume with an increase in the cycle number and the oil viscosity was observed. In the case of the micro-coined surfaces, all samples demonstrate a pronounced reduction in the wear volume (up to a factor of 100 for PAO 40) compared to the polished reference irrespective of the oil viscosity used. Originality/value This study details new research work studying the wear behavior of hot micro-coined surfaces.