Press hardening is widely employed to produce automotive structural and safety components from advanced high-strength steels. This process depends on friction between the forming tools and the work piece. Wear of the forming tools affects the dimensional accuracy of produced components and reduces their service life. It is therefore desirable to reduce wear of forming tools for press hardening applications. One way to achieve this is by applying hard physical vapour deposited (PVD) coatings on the tool. In this work, the tribological behaviour of PVD coated tool-work piece material pairs has been studied at elevated temperatures in an experimental set-up simulating the tribological conditions in press hardening. Four different PVD coatings deposited on tool steel and uncoated tools as reference were studied during sliding against uncoated and Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel. Results show that uncoated tools exhibited the lowest coefficient of friction when sliding against uncoated 22MnB5 steel. A CrWN coating initially showed low coefficient of friction but it increased with increasing sliding distance. A TiAlN coating and one of two AlCrN coatings showed similar frictional behaviour when sliding against uncoated 22MnB5 steel. During sliding against uncoated 22MnB5 steel, adhesive wear has been found to be the dominant wear mechanism. Adhesive wear was considerably reduced in the case of hard PVD coated tools in comparison to that of uncoated tools. During sliding against Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel, no clear advantage in terms of friction behaviour of uncoated or PVD coated tools was observed. However, the transfer of Al-Si coating material from the work piece to the tools was significantly reduced for PVD coated tools. Frictional instabilities in all cases involving Al-Si coated work piece material further confirmed the occurrence of adhesive material transfer.

Press hardening of Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel is the dominant technology to enable light weight design in automotive applications. Transfer of the Al-Si coating onto the tool surface occurs during hot forming. This affects process economy and quality of produced components. The reported galling mechanisms are adhesion and compaction of wear debris. Surface engineering of forming tools has been proposed to minimise the transfer of Al-Si coating. Plasma nitriding of tool steel surfaces reduces adhesion but has poor abrasive wear resistance. PVD coatings have generally been found to promote galling due to higher chemical affinity but improve abrasive wear resistance. Most studied PVD coatings are transition metal nitrides containing aluminium. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of aluminium in PVD coatings and its effect on transfer of Al-Si coating material during sliding against coated tool steel at high temperatures. This work has focussed on PVD coatings (AlCrN and CrWN) deposited on plasma nitrided tool steel. Their tribological behaviour was studied using a hot strip-drawing tribometer capable of simulating the conditions prevalent in press hardening. The results showed that PVD coatings containing aluminium induce more material transfer. The material transfer is mainly related to chemical affinity since all coatings were polished to a low surface roughness (S_a =~120 nm) to minimise transfer initiated by surface defects. The hardness of the PVD coatings does not seem to influence the material transfer since the softer coating (CrWN, HV_0.05 = ~1850) showed less transfer compared to AlCrN (HV_0.05 = ~2100). The CrWN coating showed longer running-in compared to AlCrN due to reduced initial material transfer. Formation of thicker transfer layers governs the steady state friction mechanisms. Material transfer of Fe-Al intermetallic compounds occurs at the initial stages of sliding through direct adhesion to the PVD coating. The layers grow to > 5 µm thickness within a few decimetres of sliding.

Press hardening is employed in the automotive industry to produce advanced high-strength steel components for safety and structural applications. This hot forming process depends on friction as it controls the deformation of the sheet. However, friction is also associated with wear of the forming tools. Tool wear is a critical issue when it comes to the dimensional accuracy of the produced components and it reduces the service life of the tool. It is therefore desirable to enhance the durability of the tools by studying the influence of high contact pressures, cyclic thermal loading, and repetitive mechanical loading on tool wear. This is difficult to achieve in conventional tribological testing devices. Therefore, the tribological behavior of tool–workpiece material pairs at elevated temperatures was studied in a newly developed experimental setup simulating the conditions prevalent during interaction of the hot sheet with the tool surface. Uncoated 22MnB5 steel and aluminum–silicon (Al–Si)-coated 22MnB5 steel were tested at 750 °C and 920 °C, respectively. It was found that higher loads led to lower and more stable friction coefficients independent of sliding velocity or surface material. The influence of sliding velocity on the coefficient of friction was only marginal. In the case of Al–Si-coated 22MnB5, the friction coefficient was generally higher and unstable due to transfer of Al–Si coating material to the tool. Adhesion was the main wear mechanism in the case of uncoated 22MnB5.

Press hardening is widely utilized to form ultra-high-strength steels characterized by a high strength-to-weight ratio for automotive components. Press hardening processes include heating boron–manganese steels to austenite phase, forming the steels at a high temperature, and cooling the formed blanks until the martensite phase is reached . However, press hardening processes lead to severe contact conditions between the blank and the tools including contact pressure, relative sliding, and high temperatures, which result in tool wear and increased maintenance cost. The contact conditions that occur in the stamping tool are difficult to study on site. Additionally, simplified tests, such as pin on disc and ball on disc, are insufficient to reproduce press hardening conditions in laboratory environments . The aim of this study includes developing a tribological test with press hardening conditions in which tool steel pins continuously slide on fresh and hot boron–manganese steel strips. The test programme mimics press hardening conditions with respect to sliding distance, sliding velocity, contact pressure, and surface temperature that were studied based on finite element (FE) simulations of a press hardening experiment. Furthermore, a FE simulation of the tribological test is established and it provides contact temperature in the pin tip with a high accuracy. A tribological test is used to study friction and mass loss with variational pressures and velocities that represented typically variational contact conditions in the press hardening. The tribological test is also used to obtain correlations between the tribological behaviours and process parameters in press hardening including pressure and sliding velocity.

In the press hardening industry, industrial and academic efforts are being directed toward predicting tool wear to realize an economical manufacturing process. Tool wear in press hardening is a tribological response to contact conditions such as pressure and sliding motion. However, these contact conditions are difficult to measure in-situ. Furthermore, press hardening involves high temperatures, and this increases the complexity of the tribo system. The present work investigated the contact conditions of press hardening with a commercial FE code (LS-DYNA) as a base for tool wear simulation. A press hardening experiment was established in industrial environments and evaluated through FE simulations. The numerical model was set up so as to approximate the manufacturing conditions as closely as possible, and the sensitivity with respect to the friction coefficients was examined. The influence of numerical factors such as the penalty value and mesh size on the contact conditions is discussed. The implementation of a modified Archard’s wear model in the FE simulation proved the possibility of tool wear simulation in press hardening. Finally, a comparison between the tool wear simulation and the measured wear depth is presented. 

Tool wear in press hardening has attracted researchers' attention and recently several papers have focused on the wear observations in the laboratory tests mimicking the press hardening conditions. However, the wear observations and quantification in full-scale press hardening tests are rare in view of high costs and longtime requirements. In this work, the wear behavior in a full-scale press hardening wear test has been studied in order to understand the wear mechanisms occurring in the stamping tool. Furthermore, the wear depths in the real stamping tool were measured by using a coordinate measurement machine (CMM) that can provide the quantified wear result and serve as a base to validate the possible wear model. The present study also includes the wear observations in both the counterparts i.e., the blank (workpiece) and the stamping tool with the aim of studying the transfer material/wear particles. Two common tool steels were used in the full-scale press hardening wear test and the differences in the wear severities were observed. Since abrasion and adhesion are major wear mechanisms previously in many laboratory tests, the present study identifies the wear evolution and mechanisms on uncoated tool and workpiece surfaces in the press hardening wear test.

Recent years have seen a continuously growing interest in high temperature tribological research. A significant part of this is driven by the need for improved understanding and knowledge pertaining to friction and wear and their control in the context of hot forming of high strength steels. Friction and wear characteristics of a sliding system are highly dependent on the properties of the two interacting surfaces. At high temperatures, the surface and material properties become extremely important since these systems often operate under unlubricated conditions. High temperature tribological processes are highly complex as these involve changes in mechanical properties due to microstructural changes; thermal softening; surface chemical and morphological changes due to oxidation and diffusion; deterioration of the surface and bulk material as a result of adhesive/abrasive wear and thermal fatigue. Many of these changes occur on the surfaces and/or in the near surface region. The formation of surface oxide layers and near surface layers with a highly refined microstructure (nano-structured) has been reported to have a significant influence on the tribological behaviour. An improved understanding of these effects is a prerequisite in an attempt towards controlling friction and wear at high temperatures. The main aim of this work is to investigate the formation of oxide layers and near surface transformed layers during tool steel and boron steel interaction at elevated temperatures and their relation to the friction and wear response. The results from sliding wear tests showed that under favourable conditions of temperature and load, a reduction of wear by three orders of magnitude and reduced friction by 50% was obtained. This was attributed to the formation of a composite layer structure involving a refined workhardened layer and a protective oxide layer on top. In the case of three body abrasive wear of boron steel, a reduction in wear rate when temperature increased (100–200 °C) has also been found. This reduction in three-body wear is due to the formation of a workhardened layer with a mechanically mixed layer of wear debris and fragmented silica particles on top. At higher temperatures (>500 °C), the softer matrix due to recrystallisation and phase transformations was unable to maintain a lower wear rate despite the presence of embedded fragmented silica particles.

Press hardening is employed in automotive industry to produce advanced high-strength steel components for safety and structural applications. In this hot forming process, the dimensional accuracy of produced components relies not only on an optimum friction level for the deformation of the workpiece, but it also gets affected by wear of the forming tools, which reduces the service life of the tool as well. It is desirable to enhance the durability of the tools by understanding the influence of contact conditions on tool wear. However, this is difficult to achieve in conventional tribological testing equipment. With this in view, the tribological behaviour of tool-workpiece material pairs at elevated temperatures has been studied in a newly developed experimental set-up simulating the conditions prevalent during interaction of the hot workpiece with the tool surface. The coefficients of friction of uncoated and Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel decreased when the normal load increased. The influence of sliding velocity on the coefficient of friction was negligible for uncoated and Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel. In the case of Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel, adhesive material transfer of the Al-Si coating onto the tool steel surface was the main wear mechanism and this was also the reason for the higher and unstable friction coefficient when compared to uncoated 22MnB5 steel. In the case of uncoated 22MnB5 steel, adhesion was the main wear mechanism.