Tribological behaviour of HVOF sprayed near-nanostructured and microstructured WC-17wt.%Co coatings

A ‘duplex cobalt coated’ near-nanostructured WC-17wt.%Co powder was used to produce nanostructured coatings. The tribological performance of this coating was compared with a commercial WC-17wt.%Co microstructured coating using a pin-on-plate method (ASTM G133-05 standard) with a data acquisition software to perform a real time analysis of the sliding wear process. The wear rate was studied using loads from 10 to 60 N and for various sliding distances. The metallurgical analysis of the coatings showed that the duplex Co coated powder could be sprayed to produce dense coating. Furthermore, the near-nanostructured coating showed better fracture toughness values and this corresponded to a difference in wear mechanism between the two types of coatings. The greater “plasticity” in the near-nanostructured coating was recorded as microgrooves in the wear tracks and, in comparison, brittle fracture was observed in the wear tracks produced on the microstructured coating.