Wear-triggered self-healing behavior on the surface of nanocrystalline nickel aluminum bronze/Ti3SiC2 composites.

Self-healing can protect materials from diverse damages, but is intrinsically difficult in metals. This paper demonstrates a potential method through a simultaneous decomposition and oxidation of Ti 3 SiC 2 to achieve healing of stress cracking on the surface of nickel aluminum bronze (NAB)/Ti 3 SiC 2 nanocrystalline composites during fretting wear. At the finest nanocrystalline materials, a crack recovery would be attained at 76.5%. The repetitive fretting wear leads to a modest amount of ‘flowability’ of Ti 3 SiC 2 toward the crack, facilitating crack recovery. Along with the wear-triggered self-healing, the NAB/Ti 3 SiC 2 shows an improved tribological performance with the stable decreased friction torque due to the formation of lubrication TiO 2 oxide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]