Long-term tribocorrosion resistance and failure tolerance of multilayer carbon-based coatings

Current tribocorrosion research of metallic materials and their surface protective coatings mainly focuses on their short-term properties,with test time of 0.5‒2.0 h and a sliding distance 50‒500 m,which may significantly deviate from the practical long-term service condition and thus cause a catastrophe of marine equipments.In this study,three carbon-based multilayer coatings(Ti/DLC,TiC_(x)/DLC,and Ti‒TiC_(x)/DLC)were deposited on S32750 substrates,and both short-term and long-term tribocorrosion behaviors were investigated.The experimental results indicate that the coatings substantially improve the tribocorrosion resistance of the S32750 stainless steel.During the short-term tribocorrosion test,TiC_(x)/DLC exhibited the best tribocorrosion resistance owing to its high hardness.During the long-term tribocorrosion test,however,Ti‒TiC_(x)/DLC coating indicated the best anti-tribocorrosion performance owing to its excellent fracture toughness together with high hardness.Moreover,under 5 N,Ti‒TiC_(x)/DLC can withstand a long-term test of more than 24 h.Additionally,under a higher load of 20 N,the Ti‒TiC_(x)/DLC with a corresponding sliding distance of approximately 1,728 m maintained a low friction coefficient of approximately 0.06.However,the coating was completely worn out;this is attributable to the formation of tribocorrosion products consisting of graphitized carbon and nanocrystalline Fe_(x)O_(y).