Self-adaptive surface texture design for friction reduction across the lubrication regimes

Surface texturing has been shown to reduce friction and improve durability in mechanical face seals and metal forming operations, and lightly loaded thrust bearings. However, the success has been limited to conformal contacts and low load high speed operating conditions, i.e. hydrodynamic lubrication dominated regime. Both experiments and numerical simulations have shown that textural patterns, under higher loading and/or slower speeds may increase friction and even cause the lubrication film collapse. Specific designs of surface texture pattern, as its shape, depth and density, are required for different lubrication regimes. Our own study has shown (Hsu et al 2014 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 47 335307) that large/shallow dimple reduces friction in hydrodynamic lubrication regime, whereas small/deep dimple shows benefit in mixed/boundary lubrication regimes (if the textural designs can provides hydrodynamic/hydrostatic lift forces to reduce the machine loading). In considering an engine component typically experiences duty cycles that may cross various lubrication regimes, a multiscale surface texture design appears attractive. This type of mixed shape texturing combines textures designed for low load, high speed operating conditions and the textures that are designed for high load, low speed operations. In this paper, two types of multiscale surface texture designs are presented. Ball-on-three-flats (BOTF) wear tester (under high loading conditions) is used to evaluate the performance of these multiscale texture designs along with the baselines of un-textured surfaces under the same surface preparation procedures. Two texture designs with only a single shape dimples are included in the study. Results suggest that multiscale surface texture design not only further reduces friction in comparison to the textures with single shape dimples, but also shows the effectiveness across hydrodynamic regimes to the mixed lubrication regimes.