Tribological performance of laser‐textured steel surfaces in unidirectional sliding line‐contact (block‐on‐ring)

Abstract The following theoretical and experimental work presents a study on the influence of texture parameters on the tribological performance of dimpled steel surfaces. Different texture parameters were selected through hydrodynamic lubrication modeling based on the two‐dimensional Reynolds equation and literature search. For the experimental work, microscopic spherical cavities (i.e., dimples) were created by laser on 25 mm steel discs. The textured specimens were tested in a unidirectional sliding line‐contact block‐on‐ring set‐up at different rotational speeds. The experiments showed that the area‐density‐ratio, dimple‐depth, and dimple‐diameter can significantly affect the tribological performance of steel surfaces. Specimens containing dimples with lower depth, lower area‐density‐ratio, and smaller diameters, exhibited significant improvements over a smooth steel surface. The most remarkable achievement was a 28.6% friction reduction at 20 RPM and an overall improvement of 13% considering all speeds.