Approximately one-fifth of the world's annual production is simply used to replace parts damaged by corrosion and wear. To resolve this problem, many current developments in machine building and automotive industry are dealing with the enhancement of energy efficiency and sustainability of components to save money and resources. One of the essential solutions is the reduction of friction and wear losses. A further aspect of energy saving by mass reduction can be taken into account by substituting steel by lightweight metals. But in most of the application cases the requirements exceed the properties of the base materials. To overcome this mismatch, multifunctional, application-adapted coatings are required.
In this study the development of a multilayer approach is presented, where PEEK (poly-ether-etherketone) is used as a base coating material for Aluminum substrates. The coating is applied by using laser radiation to increase the energy efficiency of the coating process on the one hand and to reduce thermal stress on the component on the other hand.
The aim of this study is to create a polymer coating system, which is composed of a first layer against corrosion, followed by a tribological layer for wear protection and final running-in top layer with solid lubricant behavior, whereas every layer is applied by using photonics.To reach the target, a comparative study was carried out to evaluate the performance of some additives in PEEK dispersions and their variable concentrations that led to different process parameters resulting in different behavior of the coating under dry sliding conditions. In the first step the correlation between laser power, interaction time, process temperature, scan strategy and the resulting coating morphology accompanied by its mechanical properties and the tribological behavior was elucidated by using explorative data analysis.
Using data mining, the most dominant correlations between the process parameters and the tribological answer of the coating system could be found. Profit by these findings, a multilayer system was established, which combines high corrosion and wear protection accompanied by a tribofilm
formation on the counter body resulting in low friction and a manifold increasing of the lifetime of the coating system.