The plowing erosion of organic coatings by spherical particles

The erosion of a thin coating on a steel substrate due to the Impact of individual steel spheres was analyzed with the purpose of predicting crater size, shape, and rebound parameters as a function of incident velocity and angle. A rigid-plastic theory due to Hutchings et. al. [I.M. Hutchings, R.E. Winter, J.E. Field, Solid particle erosion of metals: the removal of surface material by spherical projectiles, Proc. R. Soc. London A 348 (1976) 379], originally developed fbr infinite substrates, is applied here to an organic coating nod compared to a novel elastic-plastic analysis which assumes rigid-plastic theory on incidence, and elastic theory on rebound experiments performed at different angles of attack using a gas gun/high speed photographic setup and measurements of crater shape and size using an optical profilometer are compared to the predictions of the theory with good agreement. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.