Date Available

12-7-2011

Year of Publication

2004

Document Type

Thesis

College

Engineering

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

L. Scott Stephens

Abstract

The deterministic microasperities play a vital role in reducing the coefficient of friction and wear of thrust surfaces and improve the tribological properties of the surfaces. Deterministic microasperities have a specific pattern in terms of size, shape and spacing. These specified geometries are controllable and repeatable. The microasperities are micron scaled asperities and cavities on a surface that form the surface roughness. The present thesis shows the detailed process to fabricate the deterministic microasperities on thrust surfaces, i.e. stainless substrate, using micro-fabrication processes such as lapping and ultra-violet photolithography in combination with an electroplating (nickel) process. A Novel alignment technique is used to align the photomask with the substrate to get repeatable and aligned patterns on the thrust surface. Deterministic microasperities are characterized by using precision instruments such as an Optical profilometer, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Optical microscope to study the various surface parameters such as Average roughness (Ra), Root mean square value (rms) and Peak value (PV) of the thrust surface.

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