<p class="MsoNormal">Coatings are often used in a variety of extreme environments, such as high pressure, high temperatures, strong chemicals, among many others, to provide better protection than a substrate on its own. However, often it is difficult if not impossible to apply coatings to the parts which need them on-site. The rapidly advancing additive manufacturing industry offers a way to “add” a coating to the surfaces of a range of different materials. If the additive manufacturing machine is portable, it enables the application of coatings on-site. This vastly reduces the costs of coating application, as the part in question no longer needs to be removed to apply a coating. In order to develop technologies that can apply coatings remotely, we evaluate the state-of-art methods and aim to develop new approaches that are cost-effective yet efficient. This research presents an in-house approach to additively manufacture a coating onto a metal surface using a plasma source to fuse the coating to the substrate. An A36 carbon steel substrate was used to apply Ni-SiC coatings of various ratios. Wear tests were performed on the coatings and substrate using a linearly reciprocating tribometer with an E52100 carbon steel counterpart. Scratch tests were performed with the same instrument using a tungsten carbide scratch tip. Hardness tests were performed using a Knoop Hardness indenter. Scanning electron microscope images were captured using a VEGA 2 scanning electron microscope. The addition of the coating was found to greatly improve the mechanical properties of the substrate. During experiments studying wear, an E52100 carbon steel ball counterpart was focused on This ball showed signs of wear while the coating surfaces showed no sign of abrasion but with only visible adhesive wear. Our results showed that the coatings are superior wear-resistant. Similarly, scratch tests showed far less material removal in the coating than the substrate, showing greatly improved scratch resistance. Additionally, the scratch coefficient of friction measured during these tests showed the addition of the coating decreased the coefficient of friction to as low as 0.25 compared to the 0.4 of the substrate. During Knoop hardness tests, the hardness of the coating was as high as 600 HK compared to the substrate hardness of 400 HK. The combination of these properties shows that this coating and application method is useful in a wide range of industries.&nbsp; In this presentation, we discuss the characteristics and coatings, and mechanisms of resistance to wear of additively manufactured metal-ceramic coatings.</p>

Tribological Evaluation of a High-Performance Composite Coating

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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