Effects of Laser Surface Texturing and Lubrication on the Vibrational and Tribological Performance of Sliding Contact

Various textures are fabricated by a picosecond laser machine on the surfaces of circular stainless steel specimens. Vibrational and tribological effects of laser surface textures are investigated by means of a tribometer and a data acquisition and signal processing (DASP) system. Experimental results show that surface textures can reduce the coefficients of friction (COFs), enhance the wear resistance, and improve the dynamical performance of frictional surfaces. In this study, the surface with micro circular dimples in diameter of 150 μm or textured area density of 25% has the best tribological and dynamical performance. Compared with the non-textured surface, the surface with circular dimples in diameter of 150 μm and 15% textured area density has 27% reduction of COFs, 95% reduction of frictional vibrations, and 66% reduction of frictional noise. The frictional vibrations and noise in the sliding contacts can be effectively reduced by adding graphene to the lubrication oil, and the surface textures enhance the frictional noise reduction performance of lubrication.

Laboratory for Validation of Rolling-Resistance Models

In this paper, a versatile drum setup for measuring rolling resistance of small wheels is presented. The purpose is to provide a flexible setup for testing of models for rolling resistance under controlled circumstances. To demonstrate this, measurements of rolling resistance with a series of sandpapers of different grit sizes representing surface textures were carried out. The measurements show a clear increase in the rolling-resistance coefficient with increasing surface roughness, rolling speed and load. Numerical calculations in the time domain for a visco-elastic contact model run on equivalent surfaces agree with the trends found experimentally. We conclude that this approach to simplifying the experiment in order to obtain a high degree of control, accuracy and repeatability is useful for validating and testing models for calculating the rolling resistance for a given surface texture.

Influence of surface textures on the dynamic stability and performance parameters of hydrodynamic two-lobe journal bearings

Surface texturing can improve the performance of journal bearing system. The present study theoretically investigates the impact of surface textures on the dynamic stability and performance parameters of two-lobe journal bearing system. Galerkin's finite element method is used to solve the Reynolds equation governing the flow of lubricant in the gap between the bearing and the journal. Reynolds boundary conditions are applied in the simulation study of plain, full-textured, partially textured-I and partially textured-II configurations of two-lobe journal bearing. The dynamic stability and performance parameters of textured two-lobe journal bearings are computed with the variation of eccentricity ratio and dimple depth and compared with circular bearing results. The results indicate that the existence of surface textures in the pressure build-up zone ranging from 126°–286° and at unity dimple aspect ratio can significantly improve the dynamic stability and performance parameters of two-lobe bearing system.

Investigations on the Influence of Surface Textures on Optical Reflectance of Multi-crystalline Silicone (MC-Si) Crystal Surfaces-Simulations and Experiments

MC-Si is the most widely used material for making solar PV cells. In spite of the considerable research on improving the conversion efficiency of MC-Si solar PV cells still it remains well within the range of 15-20%. Optical reflectance being the major loss of incident solar energy, efforts are being made to reduce the optical reflectance of solar cell surfaces. Among the several methods proposed, creation of well-defined surface topography on the cell surface remains a promising option. Micro/nano level features with various dimensions and distributions have been created on MC-Si crystal surfaces using a femto-second pulsed laser and the influence of surface topography on optical reflectance in the incident light wave length of 350 – 1000 nm have been studied and compared with the simulation results obtained using OPAL2 software. Experimental results indicate that surface textures on the wafer surface lead to the reduction of optical reflectance in the range of 20-35% in comparison with plain surface. Width of micro grooves have less significant effect on the optical reflectance in comparison with pitch between the micro grooves. Best reduction in reflectance is exhibited by the texture having a groove width of 30 mm and a pitch of 100 mm. A post texturing etching operation is found to have detrimental effect on the ability of micro/nano level features in decreasing the optical reflectance in the preferred wavelength of solar spectrum due to the flattening of nano level features created within the micro grooves due to laser texturing.

Spatiotemporally Programmable Metasurfaces via Viscoelastic Shell Snapping

Many species can dynamically alter their skin textures to enhance their motility and survivability. Despite the enormous efforts on designing bio-inspired materials with tunable surface textures, developing spatiotemporally programmable and reconfigurable textural morphing without complex control remains challenging. Here we propose a design strategy to achieve metasurfaces with such properties. The metasurfaces comprise an array of unit cells with broadly tailored temporal responses. By arranging the unit cells differently, the metasurfaces can exhibit various spatiotemporal responses, which can be easily reconfigured by disassembling and rearranging the unit cells. Specifically, we adopt viscoelastic shells as the unit cells, which can be pneumatically actuated to a concave state, and recover the initial convex state some time after the load is removed. We computationally and experimentally show that the recovery time can be widely tuned by the geometry and material viscoelasticity of the shells. By assembling such shells with different recovery time, we build metasurfaces with pre-programmed spatiotemporal textural morphing under simple pneumatic actuation, and demonstrate temporal evolution of patterns, such as digit numbers and emoji, and spatiotemporal control of friction. This work opens up new avenues in designing spatiotemporal morphing metasurfaces that could be employed for programming mechanical, optical and electrical properties. Corresponding author: Lihua Jin, Email: [email protected]

An EHL Extension of the Unsteady FBNS Algorithm

Many engineering applications rely on lubricated gaps where the hydrodynamic pressure distribution is influenced by cavitation phenomena and elastic deformations. To obtain details about the conditions within the lubricated gap, solvers are required that can model cavitation and elastic deformation effects efficiently when a large amount of discretization cells is employed. The presented unsteady EHL-FBNS solver can compute the solution of such large problems that require the consideration of both mass-conserving cavitation and elastic deformation. The execution time of the presented algorithm scales almost with N log(N) where N is the number of computational grid points. A detailed description of the algorithm and the discretized equations is presented. The MATLAB© code is provided in the supplements along with a maintained version on GitHub to encourage its usage and further development. The output of the solver is compared to and validated with simulated and experimental results from the literature to provide a detailed comparison of different discretization schemes of the Couette term in presence of gap height discontinuities. As a final result, the most favourable scheme is identified for the unsteady study of surface textures in ball-on-disc tribometers under severe EHL conditions.

Surface Modification of Metallic Inserts for Enhancing Adhesion at the Metal–Polymer Interface

A combination of mechanical and chemical treatments was utilized to modify the surface textures of copper and duralumin inserts in order to enhance the adhesion at the metal–polymer interface and provide an adhesive joint with a high loadbearing capacity. Pretreatment of the surfaces with sandblasting was followed by etching with various chemical mixtures. The resulting surface textures were evaluated with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an optical confocal microscope. Surface geometry parameters (Sa, Sz, and Sdr) were measured and their relationships to the adhesion joint strength were studied. It was found that the virgin and purely mechanically treated inserts resulted in joints with poor loadbearing capacity, while a hundredfold (duralumin) and ninetyfold (copper) increase in the force to break was observed for some combinations of mechanical and chemical treatments. It was determined that the critical factor is overcoming a certain surface roughness threshold with the mechanical pretreatment to maximize the potential of the mechanical/chemical approach for the particular combination of material and etchant.