Surface characteristics and wear performance of laser surface engineered iron oxide coatings on cast aluminium alloy

Abstract

Surface characteristics of laser surface engineered iron oxide coatings on a cast aluminium alloy developed for improved wear performance have been studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM) in association with microhardness measurements. An attempt is made to relate the grain size and surface roughness of FeO and Fe3O4 based coatings to wear performance determined by block-on-disk dry sliding wear testing. Fe3O4 based coating exhibits finer grain and smoother surface in comparison to FeO coating. However, FeO displays superior wear performance even though the Knoop microhardness of both coatings was comparable.