Impact and Sliding Wear Properties of Single Layer, Multilayer and Nanocomposite Physical Vapour Deposited (PVD) Coatings on the Plasma Nitrided Low-Alloy 42CrMo4 Steel

Abstract

Current paper handles the comparison of impact wear and sliding wear properties of the hard PVD single layer TiN and Ti(C,N), multilayer (Ti,Al)N and nanocomposite FiVIc® coatings on the plasma nitrided low-alloy 42CrMo4 steel. All the studied coatings demonstrated a relatively high impact wear resistance at the low (104) and medium (105) number of impacts, however, all the studied coatings vanished at the high number of impacts (106). Most extensive wear among the coatings during the sliding wear test was observed for the (Ti,Al)N coating, the FiVIc® showed the least extensive wear; the most extensive wear of the counterbody (hardened steel ball) was registered for the (Ti,Al)N coating, the lowest – for the FiVIc® and Ti(C,N) coatings. The principle wear mechanism of coatings was tribooxidation and mild abrasion, of the counterbody – plastic deformation