The Ti-6Al-4V alloy is widely used in the aerospace industry due to its excellent mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. However, its limited wear resistance limits its service life. To address this issue, depositing a CuNiIn coating on the surface of the Ti-6Al-4V alloy has been proposed as an effective strategy. In this study, the CuNiIn coating was prepared by supersonic plasma spraying. The influence of the flight and deposition morphology of different particle sizes on the microstructure of the coating was systematically investigated. At the same time, the effect of friction parameters on the wear mechanism of the coating was studied. The microstructure of the coating was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The Vickers hardness tester measured the micro-hardness of the coating. Additionally, the evolution of wear morphology and damage mechanism under different loads was investigated. The results show that as the particle size of the CuNiIn powder increases, the flight speed and temperature of the particles gradually decrease. Due to the increasingly prominent unmelted particle morphology on the coating surface, the surface roughness of the coating increases from 4.3 μm to 18.6 μm. Medium-sized particle powders have better deposition morphology, with the lowest porosity of the coating being 2.62%. Coatings with higher density have the optimal hardness and elastic modulus of 163.1 HV and 122.8 GPa, respectively. When the load increases to 20 N, the dominant wear mechanism shifts from abrasive and oxidative wear to a combined wear mechanism of abrasive, adhesive, and oxidative wear. This study provides a theoretical basis for the application of enhanced CuNiIn coatings.
Zhou et al. (Thu,) studied this question.