Effect of tribological parameters and their optimization for wear responses of TiAlN coating

This study investigates the relative effect of tribological process parameters and their optimization for wear responses of TiAlN thin film deposited on heat-treated and plasma nitrided novel MDC-K hot work tool steel. The effect of tribological process parameters was studied by conducting the tribological test on TiAlN thin film against Tungsten Carbide (WC) counterbody. There were three tribological process parameters considered namely: sliding velocity, applied load, and sliding distance to conduct the tribological test and study their effect on five different wear responses, namely friction coefficient (COF), surface roughness (Ra), wear depth (WD), wear mass loss (WML), and hardness (Hv). The relative effect of the process parameters was studied using counter plots and the individual effect and contribution were analyzed using the ANOVA test. Further, t overall evaluation criteria (OEC) method was employed to select the optimal setting of tribological process parameters based on the experimental results. Finally, the surface morphology of the worn TiAlN surface against the best and worst parametric settings was evaluated using EDS-integrated SEM to investigate the underlying wear mechanisms.