State of the Art in Laser Surface Texturing

Surface texturing has emerged in the last decade as a viable option of surface engineering resulting in significant improvement in load capacity, wear resistance, friction coefficient etc. of tribological mechanical components. Various techniques can be employed for surface texturing but Laser Surface Texturing (LST) is probably the most advanced so far. LST produces a very large number of micro-dimples on the surface and each of these micro- dimples can serve either as a micro-hydrodynamic bearing in cases of full or mixed lubrication, a micro-reservoir for lubricant in cases of starved lubrication conditions, or a micro-trap for wear debris in either lubricated or dry sliding. The paper reviews the current effort being made world wide on laser surface texturing in particular. It presents the state of the art in LST and the potential of this technology in various lubricated applications like mechanical seals, piston rings, thrust bearings, magnetic recording etc. The paper also describes some fundamental on-going research around the world with LST.