Tribological properties and wear prediction model of TiC particles reinforced Ni-base alloy composite coatings

TiC particles reinforced Ni-based alloy composite coatings were prepared on 7005 aluminum alloy by plasma spray. The effects of load, speed and temperature on the tribological behavior and mechanisms of the composite coatings under dry friction were researched. The wear prediction model of the composite coatings was established based on the least square support vector machine (LS-SVM). The results show that the composite coatings exhibit smaller friction coefficients and wear losses than the Ni-based alloy coatings under different friction conditions. The predicting time of the LS-SVM model is only 12.93% of that of the BP-ANN model, and the predicting accuracies on friction coefficients and wear losses of the former are increased by 58.74% and 41.87% compared with the latter. The LS-SVM model can effectively predict the tribological behavior of the TiCP/Ni-base alloy composite coatings under dry friction.