Effect of duty cycle on residual stress and tribology behaviour of TiC x nanostructure coating deposited by PACVD method

In this paper, nanostructured TiC_x was coated onto H11 hot working steel by pulsed dc plasma assisted chemical vapour deposition method, and various duty cycles were carried out in order to observe the influence of this parameter on residual stress and tribology behaviours. The duty cycles were 33, 40 and 50% at 510°C operating temperature. Therefore, wear behaviour, hardness and chemical analyses of TiC_x nanostructure coating were characterised, and it was found that the residual stresses in the coating were compressive, which were −1·1516, −0·1323 and −0·1752 MPa at three different duty cycles, i.e. 33, 40 and 50% respectively. According to the results, the coating that was applied at 40% exhibited superior wear resistance and possessed the lowest friction coefficient of ∼0·06 in a pin-on-disc test against WC–Co.