The effect of contact stress on the sliding wear behaviour of Zn-Ni electrodeposited coatings

Electrodeposited zinc-nickel coatings, developed in the 1980's as a replacement for zinc coatings in the automotive industry, have recently gained interest in the aerospace industry to replace cadmium coatings. Due to different material properties of Zn-Ni and Cd, there is a need to characterize Zn-Ni for tribological applications. Sliding wear tests are performed on a reciprocating pin-on-flat tribometer using a steel counterface on two electrodeposited Zn-Ni coatings with different microstructure and surface topography. Tests were performed under 3, 7.5 and 12 N normal loads at a relative humidity of 60% for 2000 cycles. Increasing the normal load increased the steady state friction coefficient and wear for both coatings. The smooth and dense coating was more sensitive to the change in normal load than the rough and porous coating, as the latter experienced less wear due to the columnar structure of the coating. In contrast, the smoother and dense coating, although has less wear at low loads, has more wear at high loads due to debonding of the coating. The coating morphology affected the extent of wear due to different wear and velocity accommodation mechanisms.