Under operating conditions which are unfavourable for lubrication, such as high load and low velocity, the use of textured surfaces significantly promotes the formation of a thick lubricant film and an improvement of the friction coefficient. This paper relates to the manufacture of textures using a photolithography and chemical etching process. Different surface geometries, texturing densities and depths were designed to analyse the influence of these parameters. The friction coefficient was measured in a ball-on-disc tribometer under different lubrication regimes, and the results have been used to develop an artificial neural network with texturing optimisation potential.

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