Tribology experiment: Pin-on-disk

Eliminate hazardous oils: Towards lubricant-free tribological system

Abundant use of environmentally hazardous lubricants like chlorinated paraffin oil in production is very polluting. This motivates us to explore dry lubrication that could eliminate the hazardous oils. Knowing that the dry lubrication condition is not favourable because of its tendency to high friction and severe wear problems, we still believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it seem hard to get to it but we just keep working towards it. Our studies started with the evaluation on the tribological behaviour of a new hard coating, double-layer DLC/TiAlN, deposited onto the tool steel surface via a Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) process. A pin-on-disk tribometer was used to study the effects of DLC/TiAlN coated tool steel under dry lubrication condition and the result was compared with uncoated tool steel. The influence of different contact loads when no lubricant is present at long-term performance was investigated. Applying the DLC/TiAlN coating to the tool steel surface has led to reduction of friction and almost no significant wear scar was observed.

To know more about the topic, please read the following publications

Sulaiman, M. H., Farahana, R. N., Ridzuan, M. J. M., Jaafar, H., Tajul, L., & Wahab, J. A. (2019). Manufacturing strategies and tribology of tailored tool surface topographies for enhanced lubrication in metal forming. In Proceedings of 3rd Mytribos Symposium (pp. 47-51).

Sulaiman, M. H., Farahana, R. N., Mustaffa, M. N., & Bienk, K. (2019, November). Tribological properties of DLC coating under lubricated and dry friction condition. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 670, No. 1, p. 012052). IOP Publishing.