Wear resistance of Ti-6Al-4V alloy treated by means of glow-discharge and furnace treatments

The contemporary glow-discharge oxidising and nitriding treatment has shown to produce modified surface layers with enhanced hardness properties, in c omparison with the conventional ion-nitriding process. The aim of the prese nt study was to evaluate the tribological properties of ion-oxinitrided sam ples and to compare their wear behaviour with the one of furnace oxinitride d and ion-nitrided samples. At low coupling loads (50 N) the wear volumes of the treated samples result small and comparable for all the tested velocities. On the other hand, whe n high coupling loads are used (100 N), the wear of the ion-nitrided sample s is higher than that of the oxinitrided ones, this effect becoming mon: re markable as sliding velocity increases; moreover, the ion-oxinitriding trea tment allows to achieve lower wear volumes than the ones obtained by means of the furnace oxinitriding process. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rig hts reserved.