Friction and wear properties of TiAlN coated tools with different levels of surface integrity

Surface integrity is a critical factor to assess the quality of mechanical products, which has a significant impact on the service performance. In this work, the surface integrity of coating, such as roughness, hardness and residual stress, are changed by micro-blasting. The high-speed sliding wear experiments and cutting experiments are carried out with the TiAlN coated tool with different levels of surface integrity. The influence of the surface integrity of the coating on the high-speed sliding wear and cutting performance is investigated. The result shows that the low surface roughness of the coating can effectively reduce the friction coefficient. The high surface hardness and compressive residual stress (absolute value) can reduce the fluctuation range of friction coefficient. The cutting performance of coated tool is mainly influenced by the surface hardness and surface residual stress. The high wear resistance of the TiAlN coated tool in sliding wear process or cutting process can be obtained at the low surface roughness, the medium hardness and residual stress. It has practical significance to improve the surface integrity and the wear resistance of the coated tools.