Surface Micro-texturing by Hot Sintering for Advanced Bearing Polymers for Friction Reduction Under Boundary Lubrication

Surface micro-texturing has been proven an effective way to reduce friction and wear for tribological applications. In current work, we propose a low cost hot sintering method to apply micro-texturing on an advanced bearing polymer material. In step 1 of this method, one face of the mold was micro-textured using a micro-casting method, in step 2 the cured Aromatic Thermosetting coPolyester (ATSP) powder was filled in the mold. In step 3, the filled mold was placed in a hot press for a 2-h hot sintering process, and in step 4, the final textured bulk ATSP was completed after cooling down. Subsequently, the micro-textured ATSP bulk material was machined to 6.35 mm diameter pins for pin-on-disk configuration tribologcial studies at different speeds with a contact pressure of 9.1 MPa, under boundary lubrication conditions. Compared with plain untextured flat pins, the micro-textured pins could effectively reduce friction at speeds lower than 1.90 m/s: 14% reduction in average. Scanning electron microscopy was utilized for morphological studies of the micro-textured mold, and micro-textured ATSP samples, before and after the tribological experiments.