Erosion wear behavior of coatings with growth defects produced by ion beam enhanced pulsed filtered vacuum arc deposition

The erosion wear behavior of TiN coatings with growth defects was studied. The TiN coatings were produced on a hard metal by ion beam enhanced pulsed filtered vacuum cathode arc deposition. The erosion wear was tested with a gas blast apparatus. In the test, TiN coatings were impacted at an impingement angle of 90° by angular SiC solid particles with an average diameter of 124um. The maximum depth of the erosion scar measured by the optical profiler was used to evaluate the erosion wear loss of the coatings. The coatings proved to have much lower erosion rate than that of the substrate material and consequently, the erosion rate increased significantly to the high level of the hard metal substrate after the coatings were penetrated. The failure mechanism was revealed by examining the surface morphologies of the coatings before and after the erosion test. The erosive wear of the TiN coatings with growth defects behaved as typical brittle materials. The damage mechanism of the coatings with growth defects was described.