Thermal effects on wear behavior of additively manufactured NiTi shape memory alloys

Abstract

NiTi alloys fabricated by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing technology not only address the compositional instability resulting from complex processes but also solve the challenges of difficult machining of intricate aerospace structures. However, there are very few reports on the wear behavior of LPBF-NiTi alloys. In the present work, the effects of microstructure and thermal treatment, including heat treatment and frictional heat, on the wear behavior of LPBF-NiTi alloy and 100Cr6 ball were analyzed through a series of tribological experiments with different sliding speeds. As the average sliding speed increases (0.079–0.216 m/s), the wear rate of the as-built and heat-treated samples tends to decrease in the range of 2.69 × 10−3–0.97 × 10−3mm3/m. Although the heat-treated LPBF-NiTi alloy is 46 % harder than the as-built alloy is, the latter has a higher toughness (505 MJ/m3) and greater transformation strain of SIM (0.097). This leads to a coupling effect of heat treatment and sliding speed on the wear resistance. In addition, the wear track morphologies under different sliding speeds are asymmetric due to the 24% greater acceleration at the far end from the motor and the 2.15 mm deviation between the maximum speed position and the geometric center of the track. The wear modes of the as-built and heat-treated samples included adhesive, abrasive and delamination wear. Moreover, the wear morphologies and dominant wear modes change with the frictionally caused heat release induced by the sliding speed.