Effects of Three Types of Textures on Wear Resistance and Mechanisms of Ultra-high Strength Steel Surfaces
Ultra-high strength steel AF1410 is widely used in moving components of advanced equipment due to its excellent strength, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. However, increasingly severe service conditions demand higher sliding wear resistance than traditional surface treatments can provide. This study employed ultrafast laser texturing to fabricate three distinct surface patterns on AF1410: groove texture (1#), dislocation groove texture (2#), and dislocation-type regular hexagonal texture (3#). Dry friction wear tests were conducted to evaluate mass wear rates and wear mechanisms. The mass wear rates of textured surfaces were 82.7%, 42.8%, and 20.1% of the untextured substrate, respectively. The 3# dislocation-type regular hexagonal texture exhibited the lowest wear rate (0.0823 mg/min) versus 0.4084 mg/min for the untextured substrate. Wear mechanisms for textured surfaces were dominated by ploughing cutting and abrasive wear with minor adhesive wear; no oxidative wear occurred. The untextured substrate suffered severe plastic cutting, deep ploughing, and mixed abrasive-adhesive wear. Dislocation arrangements improved stress distribution and debris storage. Texture morphology and distribution affect actual contact area, friction force dispersion, and debris retention capacity. The results demonstrate that dislocation-type regular hexagonal texturing offers the most significant enhancement in sliding wear resistance for AF1410 under the tested conditions.