High Performance Accelerated Tests to Evaluate Hard Cr Replacements for Hydraulic Cylinders

To prolong the lifetime of hydraulic cylinders, a wear-resistant low-friction surface is required. Until now, hard Cr coatings were the best materials for this. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing pressure on the manufacturing of hard Cr plating and plated products, because of environmental and health hazards. The replacement of these coatings by alternatives has not been highly successful yet, because it requires extensive component testing, which is costly and time-consuming and thus not appropriate for material development. For this reason, there is a high need to develop tribological methods that simulate hydraulic cylinders’ component-testing closely. In addition, these new methods should also provide additional information (e.g., friction evolution) that can assist in the further development and optimization of alternative coatings. Having the above in mind and building on an existing method from the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM G133), a new test method that allows users to test directly on hydraulic cylinders was developed. This method can provide a relative ranking of both the wear resistance and frictional performance of alternative coatings in direct comparison to state-of-the-art hard Cr. Importantly, the method is repeatable and has a much shorter test duration than full-scale component tests, thereby accelerating material development significantly.