Laser surface texturing on Ti-6Al-4V

Abstract

ABSTRACT Laser has been widely used for fabricating micro-features and micromachining of several engineering materials. The present research work is based on the experimental investigation of laser surface texturing on Ti-6Al-4V. Microgroove texture was created with four different combinations, and their corresponding topographical as well as morphological behavior were studied with the help of atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. Furthermore, using energy dispersive X-ray analysis, the evidence of elemental traces in textured materials was determined. Also, the wettability measurement was done to determine the hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity of the textured Ti-6Al-4V. The result depicts that the diffraction pattern obtained from X-ray diffraction with α and β phase of texture Ti-6Al-4V was in the diffraction range of 35.96̊–78.56° and increase in power resulted due to the reduction of crystallite size. The morphological analysis reveals that the laser power has a significant effect on visibility during texturing. Textured Ti-6Al-4V shows hydrophilicity, whereas the un-textured surface depicts hydrophobicity in nature. Further, the laser parameters such as average power, pulse frequency, scanning speed and gas pressure have influential effects on the contact angle for measurement of wettability.