The effect of heat treatment duration on mechanical and tribological characteristics of Ni–P–PTFE coating on low carbon high tensile steel

• Heat treatment enhances the friction and wear behavior of Ni–P–PTFE coating.
• HT40 improves hardness but no significant improvement on tribological performances.
• HT60 yields highest hardness and shows best friction behavior under varying speed.
• HT80 shows excellent wear resistance and friction behavior as achieves lowest COF.

The current work aimed to study the effect of heat treatment duration on mechanical and tribological performances of Ni–P–PTFE coating on low carbon high tensile steel (EH-36) substrate in dry environment under pin-on-disk sliding contact. The effect of normal load on scratch behaviors of Ni–P–PTFE coating with different heat treatment durations was studied under a single pass scratch action. It was found that heat treatment enhances the friction (10%) and wear (30%) behavior of Ni–P–PTFE coating. Heat treatment duration was found to have significant role in strengthening the Ni–P–PTFE coating tribological performances under varying load applications. The best tribological performances and scratch behaviors were observed on HT 80.