AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Tribology Focus Topic Thursday Sessions
       Session TR-ThA

Paper TR-ThA3
Tribological Properties of Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) Coatings on an Aluminum A356 Alloy

Thursday, November 3, 2011, 2:40 pm, Room 111

Session: Advanced Tribological Materials
Presenter: Xueyuan Nie, University of windsor, Canada
Authors: J.F. Su, University of Windsor, Canada
X. Nie, University of windsor, Canada
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To reduce the fuel consumption and pollution of passenger vehicles, the aluminium engines have been increasingly used throughout the last 30 years. Since most technical aluminium alloys provide only poor wear resistance, various technical solutions exist to generate a wear-resistant cylinder bore surface against the sliding piston ring. A Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) process has been developed in our group to produce oxide coatings on an Al alloy A356 for Al engine block, to battle against the wear attack. Primary results showed that the PEO coatings, thinner than 8 µm, are promising candidates to resist wear at elevated temperature. In this work, further study was carried on a serial of PEO coatings on the A356 alloy. The surface morphology, coating thickness and tribological properties were tailored by adjusting the PEO process parameters. The tribological performance of the PEO coatings was better than a Plasma Transferred Wire Arc (PTWA) coating which is currently used for engine applications. Based on this study, selections on optimal thickness and morphology of PEO coatings for better wear resistance were proposed.