2 Mechanical Properties of Coatings

2.1 Elasticity

2.1.1 General Overview

Elasticity is the ability of a coating material to resist changes in its volume or

shape under mechanical stress due to increase in internal energy. The main charac-
teristic of this property is the elasticity modulus (Young's modulus), which de-
scribes the resistance of a coating material to deformation. Numerically it repre-
sents the ratio of applied stress increment to the ensuing increment of elastic
deformation. In other words, elasticity is a measure of the stiffness of the coating
material.
Resistance to elastic deformation is not only used as a measure of strength and
hardness of material. This value is also required to calculate residual stresses, one
of the main characteristics of a coating. Other common elastic properties, such as
shear modulus and the Poisson coefficient, are rarely determined for coatings.
Below the point corresponding to the limit of proportionality, the deformation
in medium-carbon and high-carbon steels is proportional to the applied stress, and
the slope of the linear part of the bending curve characterizes the bending elastic-
ity modulus. Further loading of bulk metal specimens leads to deviation from
Hooke's law (i.e. the metal flows). The behavior of metal coatings of similar
chemical composition is quite different (Fig. 2.l, curve 2).
(J

8
Fig. 2.1. Bending stress (a)-deformation (b) diagram for several types of coatings. 1 non-
metallic inorganic brittle coating; 2 high-strength metal coating; 3 metal coating of medium
and low-strength

L. I. Tushinsky et al., Coated Metal

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002
86 2 Mechanical Properties of Coatings

Bending of metal coatings does not cause even a slight plastic deformation, and
destruction occurs abruptly and without any signs of flow. The destruction surface
is perpendicular to tensile stress. For low-strength metal coatings (Fig. 2.1, curve
3) elastic deformation is observed only for rather small stresses, and residual de-
formation develops with increasing the load. Typical brittle failure is characteristic
for non-metallic inorganic coatings (Fig. 2.1, curve 1) [2.76].
Elastic modulus (E) of a coating depends on loading scheme and is 5-10%
higher for compression than for tension. The elastic modulus for coatings based on
iron changes in the range (0.5-1.0)-10 5 MPa, i.e. differs by factor of 2. The Young
modulus of pure iron is a constant determined only by interatomic interaction
forces and equal to 2.0'10 5 MPa. In spite of significant differences in chemical
composition, the elastic moduli of structural, tool, and special steels differ not
more than by 10%.
Young modulus for metals practically does not depend on their structure and
thermal treatment. Alloying and plastic deformation also have no pronounced ef-
fect on the elastic modulus. Heating of the material show leads to decrease of E,
and there is a direct correlation between the temperature coefficients of Young
modulus and of linear extension. The latter is caused by an increase of interatomic
distances in the lattice with increasing temperature, which leads to reduction of in-
teratomic interaction forces.
The situation for gas-thermal, plasma, detonation and other coatings is quite
different. Here Young modulus depends not only on the temperature at which the
test is conducted, but also on the method of deposition, technological regimes, po-
rosity, etc. Therefore the Young modulus should be determined experimentally for
each particular coating. The attempts to develop quantitative correlation between
porosity and elastic modulus did not succeed.
All methods for determining the elastic modulus can be divided into two
groups: static and dynamic. In the static methods the sought characteristics are
calculated as proportionality coefficients at a static loading. Dynamic methods are
based on the relation between the speed of elastic wave propagation in a material
and the elastic modulus.

2.1.2 Determination of Elastic Modulus for Bending

In this method the elastic modulus is determined by static loading of the specimen
under test resting freely on two supports (Fig. 2.2) within the proportionality limits
of a bending curve.
Bending tests have the following advantages as compared to tension. The sug-
gested loading scheme is much less demanding in terms of applied stresses, which
allows to carry out detailed study of brittle materials such as coatings often are.
Furthermore, no heads are required for specimens used for bending tests. This is
important since fabrication of heads for specimens made of nonmetallic inorganic
materials is rather difficult.