Dry sliding wear performance and behaviour of powder bed fusion processed Ti–6Al–4V alloy

Ti–6Al–4V alloy is the most commonly used alloy in powder bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing processes for a wide range of applications. Thus, properties such as tribological performance are important to be known. In this study, dry linear reciprocating (sliding) wear tests have been conducted to evaluate how wear rate (WR) of the alloy samples processed differently (by laser PBF, electron beam PBF and processed conventionally) may differ. Wear experiments have been conducted with a wide range of test conditions using WC-Co as counter material. Results have shown the expected increase in WR as load (F_N) increases, but the dependence of WR on frequency (f) has been found very weak. The major finding of this study is that WR is not affected by the alloy processed in different manufacturing routes having different microstructures and hardness values. It will be shown that despite the little variation in WR under a same wear test condition for the three different samples, their deformation behaviours leading to fracture and thus wear loss differ significantly. It will be reasoned that WR does not only depend on strength and thus hardness, but also ductility of the alloy.