Effect of lubricant infiltration into the groove-like surface texture on the friction response of the textured stainless-steel contact surface

Abstract Surface texturing is recognized as an effective solution for reducing friction on stainless-steel contact interfaces. Previous studies mainly focused on the influence of the texture parameters and lubricant-film depths on their tribology performances. Notably, whether the lubricant can penetrate texture and the lubricant infiltration capacity may significantly affect the tribology performances of the contact interfaces. They have been rarely considered, which may cause some well-designed textures to fail to perform their roles and be abandoned. Herein, a novel lubricant model is developed to explore the tribology performances of the contact interfaces with different lubricant infiltration capacities in textures and the influence factors of the lubricant infiltration capacities. Textured surfaces with different dimensions are fabricated by the femtosecond laser to explore the effects of the texture dimensions on the lubricant infiltration capacities. The results indicate that texture width, depth and lubricant viscosity could significantly affect the lubricant infiltration capacities. Moreover, the results indicate that the lubricant infiltration capacity would significantly affect the tribology performances of the contact interfaces. This work indicates that the impact of the lubricant infiltration should be considered in texture design. This work can be widely used to guide the texture design applied in plenty of fields.