Tribological Performance of Thin HVAF-Sprayed WC-CoCr Coatings Fabricated Employing Fine Powder Feedstock

In this study, sliding and abrasion wear performance of WC-CoCr coatings deposited by high velocity air–fuel (HVAF) spraying with various thicknesses (i.e., 240, 150, 100, 50 and 30 µm), fabricated from fine feedstock powder (5–15 µm), were evaluated. The main aim was to investigate how thinner coatings (30 and 50 µm) perform compared to conventional thick coatings (> 100 µm), in an effort to address the supply and cost concerns associated with Co and W. The feedstock powder and deposited coatings were characterized in terms of microstructure. The hardness of the thin and thick coatings was measured using Vickers hardness method from both cross section and top-surface. It was found that, regardless of the thickness, extremely dense coatings with very high hardness ( 1500 HV) can be deposited employing HVAF and fine feedstock powder. Thin and thick coatings were found to perform similarly under sliding wear with a normal load of 10 N or lower as well as under abrasion wear conditions which highlights the possibility of employing thinner coatings for a majority of the real applications. The results suggest that peening effect does not have a considerable influence on the microstructure or performance of the deposited coatings. However, for sliding wear tests with a 20 N normal load, it was noticed that wear resistance of the coatings slightly declines with decreasing thickness of the coating beyond 150 µm. The main reason was identified to be the involvement of substrate effect when performing tests under severe Hertzian contact pressure. The authors would like to thank Arashk Memarpour, Oliver Lanz from Höganäs for supporting this study through helpful discussions and by providing feedstock powders. Thank to Magnus Sandberg for assistance in preparing the samples. Also, financial support of the Knowledge Foundation, Sweden, for project HiPerCOAT (Dnr. 20180197) is gratefully acknowledged.