Influence of stainless steel specimen topography on micro-abrasion and micro-abrasion-corrosion

This work carried out a systematic analysis to help understanding how surface roughness and relative orientation between surface topography and direction of abrasive entrainment can affect particle dynamics during both pure microabrasion and microabrasion-corrosion. For that, tests were carried out in AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel test specimens using a recently developed microabrasion-corrosion tester. A 3D load cell ensures controlled application and measurement of forces during the tests. For the microabrasion tests, a slurry composed of small (phi =2.5 mu m) silica particles dispersed in distilled water at a concentration of 20wt% was employed, whereas for the microabrasion corrosion tests the distilled water in the slurry was substituted by a corrosive solutions in distilled water (1 N H2SO4). Potentiodynamic curves varying from cathodic potentials into the transpassive region were obtained within the course of duration of each microabrasion-corrosion test. The specimens were ground using two different SiC papers (#80 and #4000) to vary their surface topography and were tested with the grooves oriented perpendicular and parallel to the direction of rotation of the ball. Although the effect of surface topography was slight under pure microabrasion conditions, it was more significant under microabrasion-corrosion conditions. It was proposed that under microabrasion conditions, the formation of a low friction passive layer on the specimens made particle entrainment more difficult and therefore the relative orientation between surface topography and ball rotation had a stronger effect on the amount of abrasives that entered the contact, affecting wear rates. Grooves parallel to the rotation of the sphere increased wear rates under microabrasion-corrosion conditions when compared with grooves oriented perpendicular to the contact. Parallel grooves also resulted in higher passivation currents than perpendicular grooves, probably due to more severe damage to the passive layer caused by more abrasives into the contact