A comparative investigation on wear behaviors of physical and chemical vapor deposited bronze coatings for hydraulic piston pump

The cylinder block/valve plate interface is one of the most critical frictional interfaces of the swashplate-type axial piston pump.However,the poor lubrication interface caused rapid wear and high friction loss in an elastohydrodynamic lubrication system,decreasing the pump lifetime.Wear resistant bronze coatings were fabricated on 38CrMoAl substrate by Physical Vapor Deposition(PVD)and Chemical Vapor Deposition(CVD),respectively.Ball-on-disc wear tests were performed to comparatively investigate the wear behaviors of the coatings and bulk ductile iron samples.It can be found that the PVD-bronze coating exhibited better wear resistance than the other two samples.This enhanced wear resistance was attributed to the unique composite microstructure and desired mechanical strength,which could resist to mechanical shear and spallation,decreasing friction loss.The appropriate hardness of(1.33±0.07)GPa could be beneficial for enhancing its wear resistance.The PVD-bronze coating possessed a much lower and stable coefficient of friction(about 0.1)and wear rate(about 6000μm3.N-1.m-1)under the loading forces of about 100 N after 20 min.The wear mechanism was the abrasive wear.

Toughened (Ti_(0.2)Zr_(0.2)Hf_(0.2)Nb_(0.2)Ta_(0.2))B_(2)–SiC composites fabricated by one-step reactive sintering with a unique SiB_(6) additive

High-entropy diboride has been arousing considerable interest in recent years.However,the low toughness and damage tolerance limit its applications as ultra-high-temperature structural materials.Here we report that a unique SiB_(6) additive has been first incorporated as boron and silicon sources to fabricate a high-entropy boride(Ti_(0.2)Zr_(0.2)Hf_(0.2)Nb_(0.2)Ta_(0.2))B_(2)–SiC composite though one-step boro/carbothermal reduction reactive sintering.A synergetic effect of high-entropy sluggish diffusion and SiC secondary phase retarded the grain growth of the(Ti_(0.2)Zr_(0.2)Hf_(0.2)Nb_(0.2)Ta_(0.2))B_(2)–51SiC composites.The small grain size was beneficial to shorten the diffusion path for mass transport,thereby enhancing the relative density to~99.3%.These results in an increase of fracture toughness from~5.2 in HEBS-1900 to~7.7 MPa·m^(1/2) in HEBS-2000,which corresponded to a large improvement of 48%.The improvement was attributed to a mixed mode of intergranular and transgranular cracking for offering effective pinning in crack propagation,resulting from balanced grain boundary strength collectively affected by improved densification,solid solution strengthening,and incorporation of SiC secondary phase.

Development of Digital Stereotaxic Instrument for Pigeons(Columba Livia)

Stereotaxic instrument is an indispensable tool for numerous types of neuroscience studies and is routinely performed in neuroscience laboratories as part of a variety of experimental procedures.Due to the development of robotics and automation,the stereotaxic instrument for rodents has made great progress,while it is relatively backward and scarce for birds.A digital stereotaxic instrument for pigeons(Columba livia),a classic animal model for learning,memory and cognition,was developed in this study.Its performance was verified from three aspects including stereotaxic accuracy,stereotaxic stability and stereotaxic reproducibility.The developed stereotaxic instrument has the following characteristics:(1)a digital positioning system was used,which is characterized by high stereotaxic accuracy;(2)a novel head-fixation system was developed to increase the adaptability of head-fixation;(3)a four-point fixation method was suggested,improving the stability of head-fixation;(4)the stereotaxic instrument has strong versatility,which can be suitable for a wide variety of birds.Moreover,the proposed stereotaxic instrument has better positioning accuracy and stability,which will promote the study of neural mechanisms for pigeons.