Tribological Evaluation of Vegetable Oil/MoS(2) Nanotube-Based Lubrication of Laser-Textured Stainless Steel

In the present work, the functionalisation of austenitic stainless steel, AISI 316L surfaces via nanosecond Nd:YAG laser texturing in order to modify the surface morphology with crosshatch and dimple patterns is presented. A tribological analysis under lubrication with sunflower and jojoba oil with and without the addition of a solid lubricant, MoS(2) nanotubes, was performed. In conjunction with friction/wear response laser-textured surface wettability, oil spreadability and oil retention capacity were also analysed. It was shown that the crosshatch pattern generally exhibited lower friction than the dimple pattern, with the addition of MoS(2) nanotubes not having any significant effect on the coefficient of friction under the investigated contact conditions. This was found in addition to the better oil spreadability and oil retention capacity results of the crosshatch-textured surface. Furthermore, texturing reduced the wear of the stainless-steel surfaces but led to an approximately one order of magnitude larger wear rate of the steel counter-body, primarily due to the presence of hard bulges around the textured patterns. Overall, the crosshatch pattern showed better oil retention capacity and lower friction in combination with different vegetable oils, thus making it a promising choice for improving tribological performance in various environmentally friendly applications.