Tribological investigation of laser cladded ceramic Al₂O₃ coatings on aluminium

With regard to a tribological contact between two surfaces in relative motion, Al shows insufficient properties due to fretting. For providing optimized tribological properties, its surface can be cladded with a hard coating. An approach is the deposition of a thin hard ceramic layer based on Al₂O₃ by laser cladding. The coating can be realized with a thickness of a few ten to a few hundred microns in this process. A benefit is that that the coating can be deposited relatively thick and locally on a predefined area of the substrate. In this work ceramic Al₂O₃ coatings were fabricated by laser cladding on Al and tested by nanoindentational and pin-on-table tests.