Surface texturing of TiAl6V4 using cutting tools in reverse

The usability of Ti-alloys in tribological systems is limited due to high wear rates during sliding. Therefore, many parts of critical aircraft assemblies are built using steel instead. Empowering Ti-alloys to be used in tribological systems will therefore enable a significant reduction of weight in e.g. landing gears. Surface texturing is widely used to improve the tribological behavior of metal parts. Most texturing methods using cutting tools depend on chip formation as the primary mechanism of texturing. In this work, a chipless process of surface texturing titanium parts using a cutting tool is developed. To this end, the resulting texture geometry variance is analyzed regarding the process parameters. It could be demonstrated in selected tribological experiments, that the textured surfaces produced using the chipless process are far superior to textures produced by chip formation. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.