Substrate-affected indentation contact parameters of elastoplastic coating/substrate composites

In coating/substrate bilayer systems, the indentation contact behavior transitionally varies from coatinglike to substratelike behaviors. Spatial confinement effects of the substrate induce very complicated plastic flows in the coating beneath the indenter, leading to a crucial difficulty that is not accounted for by any of the present quantitative analytical/theoretical predictions for the substrate-affected contact hardness. In this work, the author presents finite-element-based studies on the elastoplastic indentation contact mechanics of coating/substrate systems. The effect of the substrate is taken into account by introducing the spatially variable elastic modulus and the yield stress; this approach quantitatively describes the substrate-affected stress/strain field in the spatially localized area beneath the indenter. The elastoplastic constitutive relationship of the contact hardness for semi-infinite homogeneous bulks combined with these spatially variable material characteristics are successfully applied to analytically as well as quantitatively predict the substrate-affected contact hardness of bilayer composite systems having wide ranges of elastoplastic coating/substrate characteristics. The experimental procedures for determining the elastic/plastic parameters both of the coating and the substrate are also discussed, in which the importance of the experimental determination of substrate-affected indentation contact radius/area is emphasized.