Thermal Sprayed Coatings and Their Wear Characteristics

Abstract

Severe wear is the root cause for the failures of components, which resulted in the loss of functionality and dimensional accuracy of systems. An estimation of durability and reliability of components is governed by failure analysis under rigorous operational environments with a range of wear mechanisms. The researchers have two ways to minimise the wear: either develop new anti-wear materials or improve wear resistance of existing materials by surface engineering techniques. Thermally sprayed tungsten carbide-based coatings are often feasible approaches to improve the wear resistance of a metallic surface. Therefore, these coatings on the components enhance the useful lifespan. The investigation focuses on the wear characteristics in terms of coefficient of friction and wear rate for tungsten carbide coatings. The focus of the chapter is on abrasive wear and erosion since these two types of wear have the maximum contribution to the failure rate in real-life problems. The applications, benefits, and detriments of the coating deposition techniques are summarised.