Effect of the layer architectures on the tribological performance of high-performance, additive manufactured sliding layers

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Leyu Lin
• Subject Area: Polymeric and Biogenic Materials and Derived Composites
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 516013239

Over the past decade, the novel process technology, i.e. additive manufacturing, has attracted more and more attention from both the scientific field and practical applications. Additive manufacturing has been successfully utilized for production of prototypes and spare parts or even small series production. Fused filament fabrication (FFF) also known as fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the mostly used technique for fabricating thermoplastic-based components, which provides significant advantages in terms of saving expensive tools and production of customized parts with complex geometry compared to the traditional technologies. Additionally, this novel processing technique enables the design and manufacturing of highly efficient components adapted to the load paths. The aim of this project is to manufacture and study the friction and wear performance of fused filament fabricated sliding layers on metallic substrates with different layer architectures. For this purpose, sliding layers of high-performance thermoplastic-based tribocomposites will be printed on different metallic substrates and then tribologically examined by using different testing configurations under dry sliding conditions. The friction and wear characteristics will be correlated with the tribological mechanisms, so that a deep understanding of the tribological performance of the printed sliding layers can be achieved. In addition, the tribological performance of the 3D printed layers will be compared with those of injection-molded samples, in order to assess the reliability of the additive manufactured sliding layers. It is expected that a successful project will contribute to the understanding of the friction and wear behavior of fused filament fabricated sliding layers with metallic substrate and thus pave a novel route for fabricating such components with excellent tribological performance for practical applications.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr.-Ing. Alois K. Schlarb