Comparative Study on Wear Behavior of Plasma-Sprayed TiC Coating Sliding Against Different Counterparts

In this work, TiC coating was fabricated by atmospheric plasma spray (APS) technique and its tribological performances sliding against stainless steel, Si 3 N 4 and WC-Co were evaluated using ball-on-disk tests under 50 N load. The results indicated that the TiC coating exhibited diverse tribological behaviors. The TiC/Si 3 N 4 tribopair showed the lowest friction coefficient with a significant fluctuation. The TiC/steel tribopair exhibited the lowest coating wear rate, while the TiC/WC-Co tribopair had the highest coating wear rate among the three tribopairs. The tribological mechanisms were tentatively explained based on the observation of worn surfaces. This work might provide some clues for the applications of TiC coatings.