Effect of Coating Thickness on Fatigue Behavior of AISI 1045 Steel with HVOF Thermal Spray and Hard Chrome Electroplating

The effects of coating thickness on the fatigue lives of AISI 1045 steel shaft-bending specimens with WC-10%Co-4%Cr high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) coatings and hard chrome electroplated coatings under cyclic loading conditions are investigated. Residual stress distributions of the HVOF-coated layer and the hard chrome-plated layer were measured. During cyclic fatigue testing, cracks are initiated near the interface between the HVOF coating and the steel substrate and propagate through the substrate to cause final fracture based on experimental results. For the specimens with hard chrome-plated coatings, the fatigue crack is initiated near the top of the coating, propagates through the coating, and then grows in the thickness direction of the steel substrate to cause final fracture. As the coating thickness of the HVOF-coated specimens increases, the fatigue strength of the specimens increases, which can be attributed to the fact that the magnitude of the compressive residual stress near the interface between the substrates and the HVOF coatings is higher when the coating thickness gets higher. As for the hard chrome-plated specimens, the fatigue strength is deteriorated when the coating thickness is increased. The microcrack density in the hard chrome coatings increases with the coating thickness and, therefore, may result in the decreased fatigue strength.