The Effect of Gourd-Shaped Surface Texture on Tribological Performance of Stainless Steel

Picosecond laser texturing system is used to fabricate the surfaces in this paper. Fluent and UMT2 are used to analyze the tribological performance of the gourd-shaped surface texture on the stainless steel under lubricated conditions, and the tribological performance of gourd-shaped texture surface was compared with that of the regular circular texture surface and untextured surface. Moreover, the images of wear track after tests were observed by using the S-3400 N scanning electron microscopy. The results show that the gourd-shaped surface texture with positive direction obtained the lowest frictional coefficient among the patterns investigated, and the frictional coefficient of gourd-shaped texture surface with negative direction was comparable to that of the circle texture surface. The main reason was that the shape of surface texture and the lubricant flowing direction had significant influence on the generation of fluid dynamic pressure. It proves that enlarging the converge area of the texture shape along the direction lubricant flowing direction enhanced the fluid hydrodynamic effect, and this result provided a good guideline for shape optimization of surface texture.