Erosion Wear Behavior of TiAlCrN Coating on Hard Metal Impacted by Solid Particles

Abstract

The erosion wear resistance of TiAlCrN coating on a hard metal deposited using unbalanced magnetron sputtering technique was investigated by comparison with that of the TiN coating deposited by filtered vacuum arc deposition. SEM was used for observing the surface morphologies of coatings both the un-eroded and eroded. Scratch test was used to evaluate the adhesion of the coatings. The erosion wear was tested with a gas blast apparatus at room temperature. In the test, the 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. TiAlCrN coating proved to have much lower erosion rate than TiN coating. Different from the typical brittle erosion behavior of TiN coating, the TiAlCrN coating behaved like a semi-brittle material.