Abstract
Scratch resistance of engineering polymers has become increasingly important for diverse industrial applications as scratches may greatly reduce the life cycle of the components. In this article, a new polymer surface treatment method has been introduced to enhance scratch resistance to a single-pass scratching action. Ball burnishing is a postmachining operation based on plastic deformation commonly used for metals and non-ferrous surfaces. It was demonstrated that ball burnishing is capable of enhancing the scratch hardness and indentation hardness of poly(oxymethylene) surfaces with a good correlation between these two properties. SEM investigations suggest that ball burnishing will alter the mode of scratch damage from severe ductile ploughing and brittle cutting deformation to a mild brittle fracture. A simple model has been proposed that separates the scratching action into two parts, the elastic behavior during indentation and the ploughing behavior during the scratching motion. The dense surface layer induced by the ball burnishing impedes the initial indentation, resulting in less ploughing depth during scratching.
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