Title: FEM procedures to study fatigue crack growth in thin coated components

Authors: S. Baragetti, G.M. La Vecchia

Addresses: Dipartimento di Progettazione e Technologie, Universita degli Studi di Bergamo, Viale Marconi 5, 24044 Dalmine (BG), Italy. ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Universita di Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italy

Abstract: Surface thin coatings are extensively used in applications in which corrosion and wear resistance assume great importance. Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD), Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) and electrochemical deposition processes are nowadays used to protect the surface of a lot of mechanical components. Notwithstanding that in the literature there are a lot of papers dealing with surface coatings mechanical characterisation, both via experimental tests and numerical analyses, only in a few papers have studied the fatigue behaviour of coated components. The objective of this paper is to investigate the modalities of numerical modelling of thin electroless Ni-P coated components with the aim of giving a general procedure able to foresee fatigue life.

Keywords: fatigue behaviour; FEM models; electroless Ni-P deposits; steel coated; surface coatings; thin coatings; finite element method.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMPT.2004.004259

International Journal of Materials and Product Technology, 2004 Vol.20 No.4, pp.280 - 291

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

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