Micro-Texturing for Tribology and Surface Engineering in Manufacturing Processes

The friction and wear has been understood as the mechanical and chemical issues on the surface and interface between structural components and parts with the practical surface roughness. The micro-texturing was highlighted as a positive use of interfacial asperities in geometry and topology to control the frictional behavior. Three micro-texturing methods were proposed to control the micro-texture size and geometry; i.e., the self-micro-texturing, the extremely short pulse laser micro-texturing, and, the plasma printing. The ball-on-disc testing was employed to describe the effect of micro-dimple size, density and topology on the measured friction coefficient. The wear track width was also measured to investigate the effect of micro-dimples on the wear. The surface properties were affected by the micro-textures on the surface. The static contact angle was measured to describe the effect of micro-texture size and topology on the increase of contact angle toward hydrophobicity. The micro-textured surface of aluminum sheets by the plasma printing was utilized to investigate the controllability of heat transfer processes by the micro-texturing.