Experimental Analysis and Modelling of Solid Lubricant Coating on Mild Steel Using EDC

This study reports a simulation model to predict the coating thickness during the Electric Discharge Coating (EDC) process and validates it with experimental analysis. Solid lubricant coating was developed on the mild steel substrate using WS_2, and Cu (50:50) based green compact electrodes. The simulation model developed by using COMSOL Multiphysics (5.5) software and the accumulated growth height from the heavy species transport calculated as coating thickness. Experiments with the same input parameters and coating thickness were measured, compared with simulation result and the results show with error fraction of 3% to 12%. Therefore, the present developed simulation model can be employed to predict the thickness of solid lubricant coating by EDC process with minimum error.