<p>By the introduction of machine elements made of light metals, e.g. Al or Mg alloys, which are coated with a material providing high wear resistance and low friction coefficient, both economical and environmental benefits can be gained. A high resistance against wear results in increased lifetime and lower costs for spare parts and maintenance. This also means fewer production stops and less machine downtime. Moreover, a vehicle of lower weight and with reduced friction losses will consume less fuel.</p><p>The light metal alloys display low hardness and elastic modulus and in addition they have a high tendency to stick to the countersurface in sliding contact. Hence, to be used in tribologically demanding applications, they must be coated with a material providing low friction and wear. Due to the thin and brittle nature of the available coatings an intermediate load-carrying layer has to be introduced to protect the base material from large deformations and the brittle surface coating from cracking.</p><p>In this thesis both experiments and theoretical simulations has shown that the load-carrying layer between the soft and compliant base material and the thin brittle coating should have high elastic modulus and hardness as well as a for the contact situation sufficient thickness.</p><p>A number of vapour deposited coatings have been investigated regarding their tribological behaviour with special emphasis on the mechanisms providing low friction. When sliding against steel, it was found that carbon-rich coatings show much lower friction and wear of the countersurface than nitrogen-rich coatings. The explanation is that steel has a tendency to stick to nitrogen-rich coatings, leading to steel against steel contact, but not to carbon-rich coatings. Another explanation is that material is transferred from a carbon-rich coating to the steel and this gives an easily sheared contact with low friction coefficient.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:uu-1084 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Wänstrand, Olle |
| Publisher | Uppsala University, Department of Materials Science, Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary, text |
| Relation | Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology, 1104-232X ; 583 |
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