Surface Treatments for Stainless Steel Actuators

ABSTRACT: Stainless steel ballscrew components, such as those found in landing gear and flap actuators on the C-130 aircraft, experience wear and subsequent failure due to corrosion, contamination and foreign object damage (FOD).High dither conditions, caused by constant short-travel, high-frequency movement to maintain level flight, can also induce wear on actuator components.The Air Force and commercial airlines incur high maintenance burdens associated with frequent inspections and applications of lubricants in the field in an effort to keep actuators functioning at a high availability rate.In order to provide improved wear and damage tolerance of stainless steel and steel ball screws/jack screws for aircraft subsystems, IBC Materials and Technologies Inc. will develop a novel damage tolerant, low-friction surface layer based on IBCs Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coating technology.The DLC coatings will provide an extremely hard, low-friction surface that will greatly reduce or eliminate the need for routine cleaning and lubrication of flight control actuator components.In the Phase I program, IBC demonstrated DLC coatings that were significantly more wear resistant than baseline surface layers, and demonstrated load-carrying capability.The Phase II program will focus on DLC coating optimization and environmental/mechanical validation of coated actuator components.; BENEFIT: IBCs advanced dual-layer Diamond Like Carbon (DLC) surface treatments will solve the current maintenance and wear issues caused by environmental contamination and corrosion of aircraft actuators.The increase in both surface hardness and lubricity of the steel actuator substrate will enable dry-running, maintenance free operation of the ballscrew actuators, significantly reducing inspection/maintenance and extending the wear lives of the actuators.IBC will apply the dual-layer DLC system using a single industrial processing furnace, which will minimize process time and overall processing cost.