Erosive wear behavior of Ti/Ti(V,Zr)N multilayered PVD coatings for Ti-6Al-4V alloy

The current study examines the erosion wear dependence on the "architecture" (the number and thickness of layers) of multilayer PVD coatings applied on the Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Finite element modeling and physical experiments were used to evaluate the effect of internal residual stresses and mechanical stresses arising on the surface of samples with multilayer coatings on the erosion wear under impact load. The adhesive strength of the coating was determined by the scratch test. It is shown that use of multilayer ion-plasma coatings on the basis of Ti-TiN, Ti +TiVN, or Ti +TiZrN with different combinations of the number and thickness of intermediate layers is an effective way to increase the erosion wear resistance. The erosion rate was decreased by 10 times in the Ti-6Al-4V samples by application of the Ti-TiVN coating.