Thermal sprayed coatings based on WC-Co are widely used for providing wear resistance to engineering components. The High Velocity Oxygen Fuel (HVOF) thermal spraying technique is one of the most commonly employed for depositing wear resistant coatings on steel substrates and constitutes one of the coating processes that have been technically validated for the replacement of electrolytic hard chrome (EHC) coatings, especially for extreme operating conditions. The present work aims at studying the tribological behavior, under sliding wear conditions, of a coating based on WC-12Co, with and without the reinforcement of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The coating has been deposited by HVOF thermal spraying on a SAE 1045 substrate steel. Wear tests were carried out under the ball-on-disk configuration, at a constant sliding velocity of ∼ 0.2 m.s-1 and an applied load of 10 N, employing WC-6Co balls as static counterparts. The results for the CNTs reinforced coating have shown a decrease of ∼ 58% and 86% in the values of the average friction coefficient and wear rate, respectively, as compared with the conventional coatings. The observed wear mechanism was mainly of an abrasive type
