Plunger pumps are widely used in oil pumping units around the world. The water content of the wellbore is increasing along with the development progress, so the lubricating capacity of the well fluids between the plunger and barrel is decreasing correspondingly. Commonly, the substrate material of the plunger and barrel are stainless steel, and the plunger surface is usually covered with nickel-based coating. Therefore, the performance of the plunger and barrel has been affected due to poor lubrication and eccentric wear. Non-smooth surfaces have been proven to improve the tribology performance in many cases. A surface texturing plunger covered with specific dimples has been prepared by using laser surface texturing technology. The morphology of the surface texturing plunger was characterized and analyzed. The tribology performance of surface texturing plunger samples was tested using standard friction and wear test machines with oil and water lubrication, respectively. The results indicated that surface texturing could effectively reduce the coefficient of friction, and the wear resistance of the surface textured samples has been improved to some extent.

Friction is one of the main causes of mechanical component failure and material waste. It is known from the friction theory that changing the roughness of the surface of the material can change the friction property of the material. Laser surface texturing is a good method for constructing a rough surface. In the experiment, the texture of the circular pits with different areal densities was constructed on the nickel surface. The coefficient of friction of the circular pit under the water-lubricated friction condition was kept at about 0.17, while the untreated metal nickel under the same conditions exceeds 0.65. The circular pit texture improves the frictional properties of the nickel surface.