Fabrication and tribological characterization of aluminium alloy by using photochemical machining

Abstract

Photochemical texturing (PCT) is a widely used method to modify physical topography of the surface nearly all type of materials. However, the usage of this method is the most commonly used in microelectronic mechanical systems (MEMS) industries. While there have been few reported studies on the use of PCT technique for metal surfaces and there has been very limited work on the tribological characteristics from such surfaces. Therefore, the objective of the present work was to gain a better understanding on the wear and friction behaviour of textured aluminium alloy, AA2017-T4 by considering their geometrical texture characteristics. In this study, AA2017-T4 disks have been texturized into circular dimples with different area density (0 to 20%) and depth (5 to 15µm). Ball on disc tests were performed under dry condition. The worn surface of AA2017-T4 disks was analyzed to understand the wear mechanism and durability of the textured surface during testing. The results indicate that a higher density of circular dimples (20%) had less wear and a lower coefficient of friction compared to non-textured disk. The results suggest that the tribology performance is only dependent on the surface area density but does not influence by depth characteristics.