Evaluation of the friction and wear behavior of a-C:H coatings for lubricant-reduced sheet metal forming

Industrial companies are confronted with increasing demands for sustainability, challenges in the availability of raw materials as well as rising energy and labor costs. Thus, technological measures for improving the ecologic and economic potential of production are required. An important production stage for the manufacturing of metal-based products is sheet metal forming which consists of several production steps. Initially, the semi-finished sheets are lubricated with oil to reduce friction in the actual forming stage and afterwards they have to be cleaned. One approach for the decrease of production costs and increase of sustainability is the avoidance or reduction of oil-based lubricants and hence subsequent cleaning of the sheet metal parts. However, reducing the amount of lubrication leads to higher friction and wear. Consequently, the part quality as well as tool lifetime are significantly decreased. To meet these challenges, surface modifications for the reduction of wear can be applied. In this study, diamond like carbon (DLC) tool coatings were combined with minimum quantities of a solid lubricant on semi-finished parts to analyze the potential of the coatings for beneficial friction conditions. In this context, suitable a-C:H coating systems were needed to be identified. The associated friction and wear behavior was evaluated as a function of the lubricant amount for different variants of semi-finished parts. Initially, several a-C:H coatings were generated with varying deposition parameters. Promising variants regarding layer adhesion were analyzed for sheet metal forming in terms of tribological behavior. The resulting coefficients of friction (CoF) and wear resistance were investigated with strip drawing tests. For the comparison of the results over different industrially relevant sheet metals, two aluminum alloys as well as one steel material with different zinc coatings were evaluated. For all materials, the amount of solid lubricant was varied in a range below 0.8 g/m2 up to a completely dry condition without lubrication.