Investigating the effect of surface coatings on the wear behaviour of the friction contact in ultrasonic motors

Abstract

Nowadays, ultrasonic motors (USMs) are used widely in a large variety of applications such as camera auto-focus mechanisms, devices in automobiles, industrial servo control in precision positioning, intelligent robotics, ultra-precision measuring, and medical equipment. USM is driven by traction force at high-frequency oscillations (>40 kHz) and the characteristics and life of the motor are strongly related to the friction material used in the tribological contact. In this study, two purposely built test rigs, including a USM and a high-frequency (up to 4000 r/min) reciprocating machine (HFRM), were developed. The reciprocating machine ran with a small amplitude and a high-frequency motion was used to examine the wear behaviour of the friction pairs. Different materials such as advanced surface coating (chromium titanium aluminium nitride, and diamond-like coating) on stainless steel substrates were used to investigate their combined tribological performance with the aim to be used in the USM context. A matrix screening test for material selection purpose were also carried out using the HFRM and the tribological performance of the chosen material pairs were subsequently investigated using the USM. The ranking results of the material pairs from the USM tests agreed with those from the HFRM tests. HFRM results could correlate well with the USM results by considering energy input into the wear system. Thus, HFRM can be used as a screening tool for selecting materials using in USMs.

Keywords

wear ultrasonic motor high-frequency reciprocating machine diamond-like coating chromium titanium aluminium nitride

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Uchino

‘Piezoelectric ultrasonic motors: Overview’

Smart Mater. Struct. 7 (1998): 273

H. P.

Kim

J. S.

Kim

H. J.

Yoon

S. J.

‘Wear and dynamic properties of piezoelectric ultrasonic motor with frictional materials coated stator’

Mater. Chem. Phys. 90 (2005): 391–395

K. Y.

Zhou

Z. F.

Chan

C. Y.

Bello

Lee

C. S.

Lee

S. T.

‘Mechanical and tribological properties of diamond-like carbon films prepared on steel by ECR-CVD process’

Diamond Relat. Mater. 10 (2001): 1855–1861

Grill

‘Diamond-like carbon: State of the art’

Diamond Relat. Mater. 8 (1999): 428–434

Yang

Zhao

L. R.

Cai

Yang

Teer

D. G.

‘Wear, erosion and corrosion resistance of CrTiAlN coating deposited by magnetron sputtering’

Surf. Coat. Technol. 202 (2008): 3886

Tam

P. L.

Zhou

Z. F.

Shum

P. W.

K. Y.

‘Structural, mechanical, and tribological studies of Cr-Ti-Al-N coating with different chemical compositions’

Thin Solid Films 516 (2008): 5725–5731

Shum

P. W.

Zhou

Z. F.

K. Y.

‘Tribological performance of amorphous carbon films prepared on steel substrates with carbon implantation pre-treatment’

Wear 2563-4 (2004): 362–373

Yoon

E. S.

Kong

Lee

K.-R.

‘Tribological behavior of sliding diamond-like carbon films under various environments’

Wear 217 (1998): 262–270

Liu

Erdemir

Meletis

E. I.

‘Influence of environmental parameters on the frictional behavior of DLC coatings’

Surf. Coat. Technol. 94-95 (1997): 463–468

10.

Liu

Meletis

E. I.

‘Evidence of graphitization of diamond-like carbon films during sliding wear’

J. Mater. Sci. 32 (1997): 3491–3495

11.

Shum

P. W.

Escursell

Wong

H. T.

K. Y.

Zhou

Z. F.

Shen

Y. G.

‘Tribological and high speed turning performance in Ti_1-xAl_xN coatings prepared by closefield unbalanced magnetron sputtering. In Proceedings of the FSISE Conference, Guangzhou, China, 13–17 May 2004.