Tribological characteristics of samples made from titanium alloy VT5 nitrided in plasma glow discharge

Abstract

The effect of nitriding of VT5 alloy (3.7115) in the plasma of a glow discharge excited in a hollow cathode on its tribological characteristics in pairs with different materials in jet fuel TS-1 and under dry sliding conditions has been studied. For research and tribological tests, samples of VT5 alloy were nitrided in the plasma of a glow discharge excited in a hollow cathode at a temperature of 975 ± 15 °C and a pressure of 58 ± 2 Pa in a nitrogen-argon gas mixture with a nitrogen content of 78 vol. %. Tribological tests were performed on a friction machine 2070 SMT-1 according to the scheme "cube-roller". Tests under conditions of sliding with jet fuel TS-1 were performed at a load of 200 N. The sliding speed during the tests was 1.3 m/s, and the test time was 75 s. The test under dry sliding conditions was carried out at a load of 100 N and a sliding speed of 0.785 m/s. The test time was 30 minutes. It is shown that the nitrided VT5 alloy in friction pairs with several materials has rather low wear values (≤ 2.26 × 10–6 mm3/Nm), as well as a coefficient of friction at the level of 0.08 to 0.12.

Keywords

• titanium alloy
• nitriding
• friction
• wear resistance