ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing is a developing technology and is an emerging trend in the manufacturing area. The technology provides a great opportunity for building up complex geometries from computer-aided design (CAD) data. Although it was initially used for rapid prototyping, it is widely used for the manufacturing of end-usage functional products now. Type of the additive manufacturing technology, process parameters, and post-processing applications such as polishing, blasting, peening, grinding, etc. are determinant factors on the surface texture of additive manufactured parts. Friction, wear, and lubrication are crucial tribological properties that affect the service life of a mechanical system functional part. Roughness parameters of the frictional surfaces such as the arithmetic mean height (Ra), the root mean square height (Rq), and the skewness and kurtosis values of the surface deviations have a very important role in the tribological behavior of samples. They affect contact area, contact stress, and friction and wear properties of the surfaces. In addition, it leads the lubricating regime by voids as a reservoir. Accurate analysis of the newly developed surfaces is extremely important for predicting the tribological behavior of the functional parts.
This chapter aims to define the surface characteristics of machined and post-processed additive manufactured parts. Surface texture parameters and their relationship with tribological behavior of the additive manufactured parts were defined. Friction, wear, and lubrication behavior of the AM surfaces were discussed with the reference of literature studies.
