Papers by Author: S. Prabhakar Vattikuti

Abstract: Ceramic coatings have been widely used in cutting tools and various machine parts. Even though high strengths have been obtained in most ceramic coatings, it has also been shown that ceramic coatings undergo extensive plastic deformation during scratch and wear tests. Therefore, it is essential to understand the plastic flow and related friction and wear behaviour. Reciprocating multipass wear tests have been carried out on chemical vapor deposition (CVD) TiC coatings. Obvious plastic flow was observed on the rough surface of CVD TiC ceramic coatings in the first sliding, due to the extremely high contact pressure developed on the contact asperities. However, shake down may be quickly reached after several subsequent traverses. In further repeated traverses, the plastic-elastic flow accumulates residual strain energy to the point where cracking, microbuckling, and microflaking may occur along the elastic-plastic interfaces behind the indenter. The new rough surface will appear after the detachment of the heavily strained plate-like wear debris. The repeated sliding allows the process- “plastic flow of asperities - flatten the surface and shake down - microbuckling and detachment of strained layer” to continue until the coating is totally worn out.

Abstract: There are growing varieties of glasses available on the market for the manufacture of molded optical lenses. A glass with a low transition temperature (Tg) has the advantage of extending the service life of molding dies. However, most of the low Tg glasses have a high content of alkali metal oxides and tend to induce severe glass sticking problems. This has made the molding process of these kinds of glasses very difficult indeed. The low Tg glasses normally demonstrate poor chemical durability and scratch resistance. As a result, the yields of fabricating the glass-preforms are frequently rather low. This research tried depositing a very thin layer of aluminum oxide on various glass-preforms by a water based sol-gel process. A high temperature glass wetting experiment was carried out to investigate the high temperature interfacial reaction between the coated glass gobs and stainless steel substrate. It was found that when the uncoated glass-preforms were brought into contact with stainless steel, the contact angle decreased with increasing heating temperature and duration. Owing to the severe interfacial chemical reaction, the originally transparent glass gradually turned translucent. In the case of Al2O3 coated glass-preforms, the variation of the contact angles was very limited, which presented no sticking and no wetting behavior. No reaction products could be detected on the contact area after the wetting test. The optical transmission of those lenses molded from the coated glass-preforms exhibited no or very little changes after the molding process.

Abstract: . Glass molding process is considered to have a great potential for the mass production of optical components with lower cost. Up to now, the service life of molding dies is still not satisfied. This study mainly focuses on the development of sol-gel derived Al2O3 coatings in order to extend the service life of glass molding dies. High temperature glass wetting experiment was carried out to investigate the high temperature interfacial reaction between the coatings and glass gobs. The 304 stainless steel were used as the substrate materials. The sol-gel coated Al2O3 was selected as the protective coating. OHARA L-BAL42 glass gobs were chosen as the test materials. It can be observed that very severe interfacial reaction occurs between stainless steel and glass at high temperature. The contact angle dramatically decreases from initial and then gradually approaches 25° at 825°C after 2 minutes holding time. The severe interface chemical reaction also results in the loss of transparency in glass appearance. The reaction products such as Zn and Ba are mainly from glass material. For the case of Al2O3 coated substrate, the variation of the contact angles varied from 152 to 138°, presents anti-sticking or non wetting behavior. There are no reaction products can be found on the glass contacted area after wetting test.