Effect of roughness on the wear behavior of HVOF coatings dry sliding against a friction material

WC-CoCr coatings on cast iron discs were prepared with different surface roughness and submitted to dry sliding wear tests against a commercial friction material using a pin-on-disc configuration. The effect of roughness on the friction and wear of the tribological system was evaluated. The pin wear rate increases with the coating roughness and becomes very high for an arithmetic average roughness, Ra, in excess of 1 μm. In contrast, the friction coefficient was found to increase as roughness decreased. The discs wear was anyway negligible. The experimental results were explained considering the characteristics of the friction layer that forms during sliding at the interface of the mating bodies in dependence of the initial roughness of the coatings. It is shown that the friction layer plays an important role in determining the relative contribution of the abrasive and adhesive interactions and, thereby, the resulting friction and wear behavior of the tribological system.