Abstract: The valve plate/cylinder block within the axial piston pump is a typical disc friction pair, which has an important impact on the performance of the piston pump. The surface texture can improve the anti-friction and anti-wear performance of the friction pair. Compared with the pit-shaped surface texture, the groove-shaped surface texture is better in terms of lubrication and cooling. To improve the friction and wear performance of the current valve pair/cylinder block pair, two types of disk friction pairs with 16 grooves and 32 grooves were designed and manufactured on the basis of the previous research, then the effects of the matrix hardness, texture angle and experimental pressure and on the performance of the friction pair were analyzed and discussed. The results show that:the groove-shaped texture on the surface of the disc friction pair can effectively improve the friction characteristics; the hardness of textured matrix material, textured angle and experimental pressure play influences on the friction and wear characteristics of the textured friction pair. Compared with the non-textured sample at 3 MPa, it shows the best friction and wear characteristics when the pair formed by the untreated hard material and the soft material which textured angle is 60° and the textured number is 32, the friction coefficient was only 0.038, and the wear decreased by 57.48%, and there was no serious wear on the worn surface. These results are useful for the optimization design of the valve plate/cylinder block in the axial piston pump.

Key words: axial piston pump, disc friction pair, port plates, grooved texture, tribological performance