The Average Friction Coefficient of Laser Textured Surfaces of Silicon Carbide Identified by RSM Methodology

Abstract

The electrospark deposition (ESD) is a well-known cheap method utilizing concentrated energy flux to transfer a material of an electrode onto the surface of the machined material for enhancing properties of its surface layer. Typically, a hard material of an electrode may be deposited onto the surface of materials with lower hardness to make such an object more robust for wearing. Coatings produced by ESD may be applied to protect new elements or to recover the properties of worn elements. Unfortunately, ESD process produces a surface with high roughness. The laser beam machining (LBM) has been involved to lower roughness of the coating made by ESD. The elements coated by ESD have been tested to determine tribological properties and they were compared before and after LBM. To achieve high reliability of the results, the test has been conducted in accordance with design of experiments (DoE) methodology and the results which were obtained have been processed by a statistical analysis. The description of such an experiment performed for a silicon carbide SiC coating, the obtained results and the conclusions are included in this paper.