Mechanical and tribological properties of a WC-based HVOF spray coated brake disc

Abstract Thermally sprayed WC-based coating systems are generally used to increase engineering components’ wear resistance. This research presents the results of a comparative study conducted to examine the tribological characteristics of a new brake disc created with thermal sprayed WC-10Co4Cr coating. This study implemented braking tests on the WC-10Co4Cr coated brake disc against commercial friction material on a laboratory scale disc-pad tester and compared the findings with the reference disc. The coating system was created with a high velocity oxygen-fuel spraying on a cast iron disc. The braking tests followed the sections of the SAE-J2430 test procedure. The microstructure, phase composition and properties of the coating were characterized by SEM/EDS, XRD and Vickers microstructure. The effect of carbide coating on the friction and wear behaviour of the tribological system was examined. The WC-10Co4Cr coating has increased the hardness by 3 times with a thickness of 300 μm compared to the cast iron surface. The amount of wear in the coated disc (CD) was reduced by about 85% compared to the reference disc (BD). The coefficient of frictions of BD and CD was found to be in the range of 0.43–0.61 and 0.47–0.62, respectively. The inclusion of hard phases (WC and W 2 C) in the disc coating played an important role in improving the sliding wear resistance by maintaining the coefficient of friction of the brake disc at an acceptable level. In brief, carbide coating could be claimed to be promising for challenging braking implementations.