Assessment of Mechanical and Slurry Erosive Behavior on Laser-Textured Stainless Steel (SS410)

In this paper, laser surface texturing (LST) has been used to create the circular and diamond shape texturing pattern on martensitic steel of grade SS410 to alter the various mechanical, surface, and tribological properties. The mechanical and surface characterizations have done on various shape-textured surfaces on SS410. Moreover, the slurry jet erosion test has performed on textured surfaces using a slurry erosion test rig. The hardness value of the various textured shape surface is higher than the others because mechanism of material removal for pattern is melting and evaporation, after applying an intense heat sudden cooling takes place. This might be altering the microstructure and enhances the hardness of the textured steel. The hardness value was the highest for circular-inward-textured case (HV0.3 approximate to 206) among all texturing. The tensile and flexural yield strength has marginally increased after texturing. The value of percentage elongation has marginally decreased after texturing. The modulus values for all the textured samples have enhanced as compared to untextured sample. Moreover, the modulus value of diamond-in textured samples are observed to be the highest i.e., approximate to 265GPa. The contact angles for all shapes of texturing patterns have greater values than untextured samples. All the textured surfaces show the hydrophobic and untextured surface as hydrophilic behavior. The outward textured surface has greater contact angle value (approximate to 110 degrees) as compared to others. The erosion resistance for the untextured samples have lesser among all textured samples, and the circular-in pattern has the highest erosion resistance. Because the erosion resistance is primarily depend on the hardness of the material, the plowing, microcutting lips, crater, and carbide pull-out type of wear mechanism has been identified using a scanning electron microscope.