Manufacturing and Tribological Investigation of Hot Micro-Coined Lubrication Pockets

Abstract

Friction and wear of lubricated machine elements can be reduced by the introduction of lubrication pockets produced by surface texturing. Different manufacturing methods can be taken into consideration whereas a forming process offers the possibility for mass production. Hot micro coining is a forming process, which allows manufacturing of surface textures with different shapes and dimensions into a flat and deformable material, e.g. seals made of steel. In this work hemispherical and ellipsoid pockets with a maximum depth of 100 µm have been embossed into stainless steel (AISI 304). To ensure that the used process parameters will not lead to tool damage, Finite Element simulations were performed and experimentally verified. First tribological experiments were conducted on a ball-on-disk tribometer in order to study the tribological properties of hemispherical structures with pockets depths of 50 and 100 µm. Different sliding velocities were applied to study the coefficient of friction and wear volume for different lubrication conditions. A comparison between coined and not‑coined specimens demonstrates that the micro coined surface textures lead to a significant reduction in the wear volume at boundary and mixed lubrication conditions.