In order to improve the wear resistance of titanium alloys,the potential of the plasma nitriding process with a cathode assiting discharge setup was examined.Ti6Al4V alloy was nitrided by the cathode assiting discharge nitriding(CAN) and conventional DC plasma nitriding(CPN) methods,respectively.The micro-topography,phase composition and cross-sectional microhardness distribution of two nitriding layers were studied comparatively.The sliding wear resistance of the nitriding layers was examined by a ball-on-disk test against Si3N4 balls.The results indicated that the surface roughness Ra of the CAN layer was about 1 order less than that of the CPN layer.In addition,the CAN surfaces possessed significantly greater wear resistance than the CPN layer at higher loads,and increased the wear resistance of Ti6Al4V alloy by about 2 orders due to the higher loading bearing ability,higher rate of TiN phase,greater surface microhardness and bigger microhardness improving depth.This is because the double glow discharge effect in CAN strengthened the density of the active nitrogen atoms and the nitriding efficiency.Moreover,the ion bombardment effect on the surface of the nitriding titanium alloy was reduced obviously.
This work reported a comparison between the wear and fretting fatigue（FF） behaviors of a Cr-alloyed layer and a Cr-Ti solid-solution layer.The hardness and toughness of both layers were evaluated to support this comparison.The results showed that the Cr-alloyed layer had high surface hardness but poor toughness,while the Cr-Ti solid-solution layer had excellent toughness but low hardness.The FF properties of the modified Ti6A14 V alloy depended on the trade-off between two factors：wear resistance and fatigue resistance.Although the Cr-alloyed layer could effectively resist the wear in fretting areas,its poor toughness caused the fatigue resistance to drop sharply and hence led to a premature failure in FF test.Due to the relatively good fatigue resistance,the Cr-Ti solid-solution layer had slightly higher FF life than that of the Cr-alloyed layer;however,its low hardness resulted in severe wear in correspondence with the fretting area and thus a failure to improve the FF properties of Ti6A14 V alloy.When combined with shot peening post-treatment,the FF life of both layers increased by about three times compared to that of the Ti6A14 V alloy.A further study showed that the poor toughness or low hardness still exerted negative influence on combination-treated samples.
Shou-Ming YuDao-Xin LiuXiao-Hua ZhangCheng-Song Liu
A CrZr-alloyed layer was prepared through a pre-zirconizing and subsequent chromizing treatment on a Ti6Al4V substrate.After the removal of the top Cr deposit and Ti4Cr layers,a（Cr,Zr）-Ti solidsolution layer was obtained.The microstructure,composition,microhardness and toughness of the（Cr,Zr）-Ti solid-solution layer were evaluated.The results showed that the pre-addition of Zr played an important role in inhibiting the precipitation of the soft Ti4Cr phase,which in turn allowed us to obtain a material characterized by a remarkable hardness.Wear and fatigue tests showed that the（Cr,Zr）-Ti solid-solution layer could coordinately improve the properties of the Ti6Al4V alloy.This was mainly due to the good match of hardness and toughness of the（Cr,Zr）-Ti solid-solution layer.In addition,the gradual change in composition and mechanical properties was conducive to the coordinated deformation between the（Cr,Zr）-Ti solid-solution layer and the Ti6Al4V substrate during fatigue tests.This reduced the stress concentration in correspondence of the interface between the two materials.
The effects of grit blasting (GB),shot peening (SP) pretreatment and high velocity oxygen fuel(HVOF) sprayed WC-17Co cermet coating on the fatigue properties of the novel ultra-high strength TC21 titanium alloy were investigated with a rotating bending fatigue test machine.The basic properties and surface integrity of the coating were investigated by using X-ray diffraction (XRD),surface roughness meter,microscopic hardness tester,scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray stress test instruments.The results showed that the residual compressive stress could be introduced into the surface of TC21 alloy by GB and SP pretreatment,and that HVOF sprayed WC-17Co coating was compactly bonded with TC21 alloy substrate and it significantly improved the surface hardness of the substrate.However,there was a certain residual tensile stress in the sublayer of the coating.SP could significantly increase fatigue resistance of TC21 alloy due to the surface residual compressive stress.There was no significant effect on fatigue resistance by GB treatment due to the offset between the influence of surface residual compressive stress and the surface notch effect.The fatigue resistance of TC21 alloy was significantly reduced by HVOF WC-17Co coating prepared with GB pretreatment.This could be attributed to the relaxation of surface residual compressive stress during the HVOF heating process,pore defects and residual tensile stress distribution in the WC-17Co coating with low toughness,and the surface notch induced by GB.The fatigue resistance of TC21 alloy was slightly reduced by HVOF WC-17Co coating prepared with SP pretreatment.This was attributed to the offset between the advantage effect by SP and disadvantageous effect of WC-17Co coating and high temperature factor during the HVOF process.
