Abstract
Composite has been widely used in various fields due to its advanced performance. To reveal the relation between the mechanical properties of the composite and that of each individual component, finite element analysis (FEA) has usually been adopted. In this study, in order to predict the mechanical properties of hard coating on a soft polymer, the response of this coating system during nanoindentation was modelled. Various models, such as a viscoelastic model and fitting model, were adopted to analyse the indentation response of this coating system. By varying the substrate properties (i.e., Young’s modulus, viscoelasticity, and Poisson’s ratio), Young’s modulus, energy loss, and the viscoelastic model of the coating system were analysed, and how the mechanical properties of the substrate will affect the indentation response of the coating system was discussed.
Highlights
Various functional coatings have been adopted to improve the surface properties of the substrate, such as oxide coating which has been applied to polymer substrates and ceramic coating which has been applied to metal substrates [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The finite element analysis has become a major technique to simulate the response of hard coating on a soft polymer indented by a spherical tip
Indentation responses of hard coating (v = 0:3) on 9 different substrates (v = 0:3) have been simulated and analysed firstly, and most of the work focuses on the stress relaxation period
Summary
The mechanical properties of these coatings are important in determining their lifetime. Conventional techniques are incapable of measuring the mechanical properties of thin coating layers. Nanoindentation has been adopted, which is an efficient technique for determining mechanical properties of thin coatings. This measurement has the features of operating at nano- to submicroscale and recording both indentation force and penetration, from which mechanical properties of the specimen (such as Young’s modulus, hardness, and stress relaxation) can be deconvoluted [7,8,9]
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