WIT Press


Computational Evaluation Of Interfacial Fracture Toughness Of Thin Coatings

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

62

Pages

10

Page Range

85 - 94

Published

2009

Size

400 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/SECM090081

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

M. Bielawski & K. Chen

Abstract

A computational method to evaluate fracture toughness of single- and multilayered coatings using first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations was proposed. This method was first applied to calculate elastic properties and fracture toughness KIC of single crystalline TiC and several transition metal nitrides with cubic structure, such as TiN, CrN, ZrN, VN and HfN. After comparison with known experimental data and other DFT results, the reliability of present calculations was favourably confirmed. Next, DFT was applied to calculate the ideal work of adhesion Wad, Young’s modulus E and interfacial fracture toughness KIC Int for bi-layer combinations of five transition metal nitrides in (100) and (110) surface orientations. For the analyzed coatings, the following trends were observed: E(100) > E(110), Wad(100) < Wad(110) and KIC Int(100) < KIC Int(110), demonstrating that it is the Wad that plays a decisive role in determining interfacial fracture toughness of these materials. All interfaces formed with TiN in the (110) orientation showed the best combination of adhesion and interfacial fracture toughness. Keywords: thin coatings, first-principles calculations, elastic properties, fracture toughness, interfacial fracture toughness.

Keywords

thin coatings, first-principles calculations, elastic properties, fracture toughness, interfacial fracture toughness