L. M. Vilhena

Characterization and Design of Laser Textured Surfaces

Increased requirements for improved performance and reliability of mechanical systems dictate the use of new advanced materials and surface engineering techniques, which would increase efficiency and reduce energy losses. Already with a small change in surface roughness or topography lubrication mechanism can be change, thus leading to substantial improvement in tribological behaviour of contact surfaces. One of the ways of altering surface topography, known as surface texturing is by introducing small dimples or channels at the contact surface. Surface texturing is already successfully used in different applications, however, they are mainly based on trial and error approach. The aim of this investigation was to identify surface roughness parameters which could be used as a design parameter when preparing textured surfaces and to determine the effect of texturing parameters on roughness and tribological properties of boundary lubricated surfaces. Results of this investigation show that textured surfaces can be treated as an ordered roughness, with skewness and kurtosis parameters showing good correlation with the change in tribological behaviour of contact surfaces. Negative skewness and high kurtosis values, which can be achieved through wedge-shaped dimples, reduced dimple size and increased dimple spacing, were found to result in lower friction.© 2009 ASME