Abstract
Titanium alloys are used for their good mechanical and corrosion properties, but generally experience poor wear behavior. This can effectively be counteracted by a thermal oxidation treatment, reducing wear significantly. Employing a special sample preparation, we study the transition of tribological properties between thermally oxidized and bulk Ti6Al4V on a single sample. While oxygen signal intensity and hardness followed an exponential decay from the surface to bulk material, tribological results showed a step-like transition from low to high friction and wear with increasing distance from the surface. Low wear was associated with minor abrasive marks, whereas high wear showed as severe adhesive material transfer onto the steel counter body. Besides the mechanical property of hardness, also a change in fracture behavior by interstitial oxygen could influence the observed tribological behavior.
Highlights
Titanium alloys are heavily used for their high specific strength and good corrosion resistance
This color scheme of red to purple according to the position of the experiment on the sample is used in the following results
glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GDOES) signal intensity can only be interpreted qualitatively, since intensity depends on atomic concentration and other factors such as emission yield and sputter rate [28, 29]
Summary
Titanium alloys are heavily used for their high specific strength and good corrosion resistance. Their high strengthto-weight ratio makes them desirable materials especially in aerospace industry [1]. Their excellent corrosion resistance yields good biocompatibility which, together with high strength, makes them appicable in biomedical industry [2]. A major drawback of titanium alloys are the notoriously poor tribological properties like high, unsteady friction [4] and low wear resistance [5]. The use of titanium alloys is considered to be restricted to non-tribological parts [8]. In order to overcome this limitation, many different methods of surface engineering have been used on titanium alloys in order to improve their
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