Tribological properties of laser surface texturing and coating duplex-treated surface

Components of space machines often works at high temperature and vacuum, or on other rigour conditions, the traditional liquid lubricant cannot satisfy the requirement. The common solid lubricant is hard to supply between two friction surfaces continuously and it is easily decomposed and failure at high temperature. It is an urgent need to study a new type of lubrication technology. In this paper, the surface of 1Cr18Ni9Ti with high hardness and micro dimples was prepared through laser texturing and plasma molybdenizing/plasma nitriding duplex treatment. The textured surface was coated with MoS2 lubricating film and the friction and wear properties from room temperature to high temperature were evaluated. The results show that the laser surface textured dimples trap hard abrasive particles and reduce the damage to the lubricating film, and thus decrease the wear rate. The optimum dimple density of 7.1% is obtained. At elevated temperature, the wear rate of molybdenized texture or nitrided texture is lower than that of the matrix and single textured surface.