Effectiveness of Surface Texturing for Improving the Anti-seizure Property of Copper Alloy☆

Abstract It is well known that lead-bronze is widely used in the automotive industry owing to the high anti-seizure property. However, because of toxicity of lead, the automotive industry demands a lead-free copper alloy from the viewpoint of environment. Lead- free copper alloy, which has the anti-seizure property as high as lead-bronze, has not been yet well exploited. For this reason, the objective of this study is to improve the anti-seizure property of lead-free copper alloy using a laser surface texturing (LST). In this study, a ring-on-ring sliding friction tester was used to assess the effectiveness of LST on the anti-seizure property of lead- free copper alloy. The upper specimens were made of FCD700, while the textured bottom specimens were made of PBC2 (lead- free copper alloy). A Daphne Hydraulic Fluid 32 (Idemitsu) paraffinic oil was used as a lubricant. The sliding friction test was conducted with a running-in period for 10 min at a load of 50 N. Afterwards, the load was increased incrementally from 50 N to 1600 N, while the friction coefficient was measured simultaneously. The friction test results showed that the textured specimens have a better anti-seizure property compared to the non-textured specimens. Based on the obtained experimental results, it was concluded that the arrangement and area ratio of dimples play an important role in improving the anti-seizure property.