Amorphous Carbon Coatings for Locally Adjusted Tribological Properties in Sheet Bulk Metal Forming

In sheet bulk metal forming, locally adapted friction properties of the contact tool/workpiece are an appropriate means for the targeted enhancement of the material flow, enabling an improved form filling and lowered forming forces. However, the implementation of desirable friction conditions is not trivial. And further, friction is inseparably linked to wear and damage of the contacting surfaces. This calls for a methodological approach in order to consider tribology as a whole already in the early phases of process layout, so that tribological measures which allow fulfilling the requirements concerning local friction and wear properties of the tool surfaces, can already be selected during the conceptual design of the forming tools. Thin tribological coatings are an effective way of improving the friction and wear properties of functional surfaces. Metal-modified amorphous carbon coatings, which are still rather new to the field of metal forming, allow tackling friction and wear simultaneously. Unlike many other types of amorphous carbon, they have the mechanical toughness to be used in sheet bulk metal forming, and at the same time their friction properties can be varied over wide ranges by proper choice of the deposition parameters. Based on concrete research results, the mechanical, structural and special tribological properties of tungsten-modified hydrogenated amorphous carbon coatings (a-C:H:W) are presented and discussed against the background of the tribological requirements of a typical sheet bulk metal forming process.