Coatings are added to components to provide enhanced protection from the surroundings or to recondition them after the surfaces have been damaged. But the change in conditions at the surface will often lead to a change in the resistance to fatigue loading. This investigation is focused on the behaviour of shouldered shafts electroplated with nickel, chromium and a cobalt/chromium carbide composite. Changes, in fatigue strength are demonstrated. Each of the materials has a unique effect on the behaviour of a shaft, although there is a similarity which can be utilised in design. Each can reduce the fatigue strength by a substantial amount, but it is possible to optimize the design of a new shaft so that its strength is not significantly different to that of an uncoated version. The composite coating has the least effect. Explanations for these effects are given, based on differences in the mechanical properties of the substrate and coating materials, the distribution of residual stresses within the materials, and the interaction of these factors with the applied stress profile. Recommendations and methods of analysis which can be used in the design of coated components are presented. The contribution of the manufacturing processes is discussed, and grinding is highlighted as a dominant factor. Gentle grinding procedures are shown to produce ideal conditions by inducing large compressive residual stresses in the surfaces. Radial plots of the residual stresses have been produced. These were obtained by techniques based on Sachs' method, using electrochemical machining and an extended analysis developed for use with coated parts. The stress distributions were not affected by fatigue limit loading, indicating that stress relief methods using amplitudes of this order are ineffective and unsafe.

The Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) magnetron sputtering process is one of the widely used techniques for depositing thin film coatings on substrates for various applications such as integrated circuit fabrication, decorative coatings, and hard coatings for tooling. In the area of coatings on cutting tools, tool life can be improved drastically with the application of hard coatings. Application of coatings on cutting tools for various machining techniques, such as continuous and interrupted cutting, requires different coating characteristics, these being highly dependent on the process parameters under which they were formed. To efficiently optimise and customise the deposited coating characteristics, PVD process modelling using RSM methodology was proposed. The aim of this research is to develop a PVD magnetron sputtering process model which can predict the relationship between the process input parameters and resultant coating characteristics and performance. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used, this being one of the most practical and cost effective techniques to develop a process model. Even though RSM has been used for the optimisation of the sputtering process, published RSM modelling work on the application of hard coating process on cutting tool is lacking. This research investigated the deposition of TiAlN coatings onto tungsten carbide cutting tool inserts using PVD magnetron sputtering process. The input parameters evaluated were substrate temperature, substrate bias voltage, and sputtering power; the out put responses being coating hardness, coating roughness, and flank wear (coating performance). In addition to that, coating microstructures were investigated to explain the behaviour of the developed model. Coating microstructural phenomena assessed were; crystallite grain size, XRD peak intensity ratio I111/I200 and atomic number percentage ratio of Al/Ti. Design Expert 7.0.3 software was used for the RSM analysis. Three process models (hardness, roughness, performance) were successfully developed and validated. The modelling validation runs were within the 90% prediction interval of the developed models and their residual errors compared to the predicted values were less than 10%. The models were also qualitatively validated by justifying the behaviour of the output responses (hardness, roughness, and flank wear) and microstructures (Al/Ti ratio, crystallographic peak ratio I111/1200, and grain size) with respect to the variation of the input variables based on the published work by researchers and practitioners in this field. The significant parameters that influenced the coating hardness, roughness, and performance (flank wear) were also identified. Coating hardness was influenced by the substrate bias voltage, sputtering power, and substrate temperature; coating roughness was influenced by sputtering power and substrate bias; and coating performance was influenced by substrate bias. The analysis also discovered that there was a significant interaction between the substrate temperature and the sputtering power which significantly influenced coating hardness, roughness, and performance; this interaction phenomenon has not been reported in previously published literature. The correlation study between coating characteristics, microstructures and the coating performance (flank wear) suggested that the coating performance correlated most significantly to the coating hardness with Pearson coefficient of determination value (R2) of 0.7311. The study also suggested some correlation between coating performance with atomic percentage ratio of Al/Ti and grain size with R2 value of 0.4762 and 0.4109 respectively.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This work is focused on developing viable self-healing coatings, especially considering the viability of the coating in a commercial context. With this in mind, finding low cost healing agents, with satisfactory healing and mechanical properties as well as adapting the healing system for use in coatings was required. Seven potential healing agents were evaluated and an air-drying triglyceride (linseed oil) was identified as the candidate healing agent. Different encapsulation techniques were evaluated and ureaformaldehyde microcapsules were chosen as the candidate encapsulation technique. Self-healing coatings were fabricated using urea-formaldehyde encapsulated linseed oil. EIS, SEM and TGA technologies were used to evaluate mechanical performance, corrosion resistance, and self-healing performance.