Tribological behaviours of DLC films with different counterparts

Engineering materials with low friction and wear coefficient are important factor in order to reduce energy consumption of an operation and increasing the lifetime of its tool. Selected engineering fields such as microelectronics, optics, manufacturing, automotive and biomedical fields are now coated with DLC films due to its high wear resistance and low friction mechanical properties. Numerous studies had shown the tribological properties of DLC films; however, studies on tribological behaviour of DLC films with varying counterparts are yet to be conducted. As such, the objective of this study is to investigate and understand the tribological properties of DLC films with varying counterparts under unlubricated sliding conditions. Non-hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C) DLC films and 6 varying counterparts were used in this experiment, alumina (Al2O3), copper (Cu), steel (Fe), silicon nitride (Si3N4), tungsten carbide (WC) and zirconia (ZrO2). The load, sliding speed and number of laps remain constant at 5 N, 3.60 cm/s and 20 000 laps respectively for the duration of 2 hours. From the experiment, it is evident that the improvement of friction coefficient of a-C DLC films is may be due to many factors such as lower contact radius, higher contact stress pressure and/or higher temperature rise of the counterpart with the DLC films. Lastly, the improvement of wear rate of a-C DLC films may be due to the lower elastic modulus and hardness of the counterpart but higher than the DLC films’ elastic modulus and hardness.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering