Enhancing the friction and wear resistance of mild steel using heat Treated and laser treated nickel Phosphorus crab shell Composite coatings

Abstract

Mild steel is a low carbon steel which was the accepted steel material in several industrial applications due to its better malleability, weld-ability and low cost. However, mild steel is still not recommended for tribology applications and, most importantly, for components running in the dry sliding condition due to abrupt transition of wear modes. These various wear transition modes could lead to a high material loss and ultimately resulting in the components failure. Many mechanical components usually operate under the dry sliding condition. So, it is obvious to resist the wear transition of mild steel in dry sliding condition, to make applicable for tribology applications. Hence, to overcome this, it is necessary to modify the surface of mild steel through the coating process. Among the various coating techniques, electroless deposition process has been the most promising technique which finds use in surface engineering of steel components. Electroless coating technique is an autocatalytic chemical reduction process used in various industrial applications owing to its good lubricity, hardness, wear, and corrosion resistance. Lubrication and hardness were the primary reason for the sustainability of NiP coating in the tribology applications. However, the severe adhesive wear was the predominant wear mechanism for NiP coating at high load condition. This has been overcome through electroless NiP composite coating, followed by code positing hard second phase particles with NiP alloy matrix. Though the wear is improved by the hard second phase particles, its friction coefficient was high. The other criterion for improving the wear behavior is introducing lubricant particle in the NiP matrix. newline