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Tribology International
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/triboint
Tribology and wear resistance of the stainless steel. The solgel coating
impact on the friction and damage
B. Tlili a,b,n, A. Barkaoui a, M. Walock b,c
a
Universit de Tunis El Manar, Ecole Nationale dIngnieurs de Tunis, LR-11-ES19 Laboratoire de Mcanique Applique et Ingnierie (LR-MAI), 1002 Tunis,
Tunisia
b
LaBoMaP, Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Rue Porte de Paris, Cluny 71250, France
c
Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The solgel coating method is considered to be simple, easy to adopt, requires low processing tem-
Received 1 March 2016 perature and leads to high degree of purity oxide coatings. Moreover, the fabrication of metal oxide thin
Received in revised form lms by solgel technic is cost effective, reproducible and applicable to large substrates without any
2 June 2016
shape restriction. This work focuses on optimizing conditions for depositing alumina coatings by solgel
Accepted 3 June 2016
Available online 6 June 2016
method on stainless steel substrates with a low annealing temperature, in order not to degrade the metal
substrate. Moreover, to obtain coatings of several micron thick, the solgel was adapted by adding
Keywords: ceramic powder or by successive layers deposition which reduces the stresses occurring in the coatings
Solgel during the heat treatment. The various as-obtained layers are characterized in terms of morphological
Layer
features, microstructure, hardness and the tribological behavior and wear resistance.
Alumina
The results showed that the deposited alumina coating at low temperature crystallized in -Al2O3.
Tribology
Wear Adding to that, the increase of the temperature favors the presence of -Al2O3 structure. Moreover, the
measurements demonstrate that the mechanical properties of solgel deposited alumina coatings in
terms of hardness, wear resistance are improved in comparison with uncoated stainless steel or the
classic nitrited steel.
& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.triboint.2016.06.004
0301-679X/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
B. Tlili et al. / Tribology International 102 (2016) 348354 349
Table1
2.4. Wear tests
Nominal composition of stainless steel AISI304 mass examined in wt%.
The study of the wear and tribology behavior is developed by a
Material Mn Si Cr Ni Fe pin-on-disc tribometer (MT/10/SCM from Microtest) without
AISI304 2 1 1820 810.5 Balance
lubrication in room temperature, at a humidity of about 31%. The
counter-body was a 6 mm diameter of 100Cr steel ball. The tests
350 B. Tlili et al. / Tribology International 102 (2016) 348354
Fig. 1 shows the SEM photographs of the surface (a) and the
polished cross-section (b) morphologies of multilayer lm
obtained from the solgel coating. In ambient oxygen, the rst
layer is heated at 180 C for 3 h, while the second layer is heated at
500 C for 1 h (the step is repeated for all the number of layer) in
order to remove the organic substances completely from the lm.
It can be seen in Fig. 4, that the solgel coating is smooth and
homogeneous. Moreover, it presents a good cohesion at the metal
interface (Fig. 1a), a compact and defect free structure. These
results are conrmed by literature [24]. It is possibly due to a
solution with a lower molar ratio that will produce rather smaller
alumina colloidal particles. The gel can be dened as a three- Fig. 1. Distribution and thickness (5 mm) of the layers in the coating.
Hardness (Hv)
700
650
600
450
400
0 50 100 150 200
Loads (g)
Fig. 5. Hardness values of steel substrate, multilayer gel (5 m thickness) coated
substrate- alumina.
Stainless steel
Coated stainless steel
1,0
0,8
0,6
0,4
0,2
0,0
0 10 20 30 40
Contact length (m)
Fig. 3. EDS bulk analysis of Al2O3 coating. Fig. 6. Variation of the instantaneous friction coefcient of coated and uncoated
stainless steel: sliding distance 40 m, Fn 1 N, T 22 C, and 0.01 m s 1 cir-
cumference velocity.
Fig. 8. Traces obtained after rotated wear test on stainless steel AISI304 coated by
Al2O3 after sliding distance of 40 m, Fn 1 N, T 22 C: (a) 0.01 m s 1 cir-
cumference velocity, (b) 0.05 m s 1 circumference velocity.
The coated surface stainless steel has been observed by SEM for
two different speed levels (Fig. 8). It's clear that for a low speed, the
surface gets smoother and has no defects. An EDX analysis in the
contact zone has revealed intense peaks corresponding to Al and O)
originally existing in the coating composition (Fig. 8a). This result
justies the presence of the coating in the surface substrate after
wear tests. Moreover, for a higher speed, the sample surface shows
defects (cracks) caused by high variations of thermo-mechanical
parameters (Fig. 8b). Here also the EDX analysis puts into evidence
the presence of aluminum and oxygen layer in the substrate surface,
but with a lower intensity than the previous results. Consequently,
this type of coating can be used for high loads and temperature.
At higher magnications, the coating is still visible and it is
slightly damaged with the presence of cracks (Fig. 9). Two types of
cracks are visible: the rst is seen in the big delaminated cracks
elongated in the sliding direction in zones where the deepest
grooves concentrate (arrow 1.2 in Fig. 9a). The second is mani-
fested in small cracks at its vicinity (arrow 3 in Fig. 9a). From its
morphology, it seems that the growth and coalescence of these
small cracks rise the big detachments. On the other hand, the
Al2O3 coating present after the wear test is still protecting the
substrate from the action of the counter body. This indicates that,
although Al2O3 is a brittle ceramic coating, it still presents good
inner compaction, and that great adhesion to the substrate of the
coating is achieved [24]. In the wear debris of the solgel coating,
only a small number of particles is observed and EDX spectrum
conrms that they are Al2O3 platelets (inset in Fig. 9b). These
platelets correspond in size to the delaminated alumina coating
parts. Similar results are found by Ouyang et al. [25].
The wear rate for the different samples in dry sliding conditions
has been plot in Fig. 10. The wear rate observed strongly varied for
Fig. 9. SEM micrographs of the solgel coating after damage: (a) detail of the wear the different systems. The specic wear rate fraction between the
track with coating cracking arrow marked; (b) wear debris and its EDS inset. stainless steel and coated steel nitride is approximately of the
order of a factor of seven. Justies this quantitative study of the
contribution to the solgel alumina coatings resistance degrada-
tion due to wear. This quantitative study is comparable to the
results (wear experiments have been carried out on solgel silica
coatings) found by Lpez [23].
4. Conclusions