Experimental Study on the Wear Characteristics of Textured Joint Surfaces under Bionic Lubrication

Abstract

Ti15Mo7Zr15Ta1.00Si titanium alloy contained higher concentration of silicon and better elastic properties, excellent biocompatibility and lower processing cost. To investigate the influence of texture shapes and parameters of joint surfaces on the friction and wear properties under bionic lubrication conditions, three types of texture morphologies (circular, elliptical, and equal-width grating) with the same pit depth and surface coating rate were processed on a Ti15Mo7Zr15Ta1.00Si titanium alloy using a picosecond laser processing system in this study. Then, the "ceramic–metal" friction and wear tests of textured and smooth samples under lubrication with bovine serum protein were performed using a UMT-3 multifunctional friction and wear testing machine. The results showed that the surface micro-texture morphology could improve the anti-friction properties of titanium alloy artificial joint materials. The wear resistance of the circular micro-dimples improved with an increase in the circular diameter. In the elliptical micro-dimple texture morphology, the vertical arrangement of the ellipses could provide the maximum bearing capacity and best friction reduction effect, followed by the elliptical morphology and the transverse ellipse arrangement. The denser the arrangement of the equal-width bars, the better the friction reduction effect was.