Experimental fatigue lifetime of coated and uncoated aluminum alloy under isothermal and thermo-mechanical loadings

Abstract This paper presents the fatigue lifetime of an aluminum–silicon–magnesium alloy, widely used in diesel engine cylinder heads, both with and without a thermal barrier coating (TBC) system. The coating system in this study consists of two layers including a 150 μm thick metallic bond coat and a zirconium oxide top coat 350 μm thick. These coating layers were applied on the substrate of A356.0 alloy by air plasma thermal spraying. The isothermal fatigue tests were conducted in low cycle fatigue (LCF) regime at various temperatures. Out-of-phase thermo-mechanical fatigue (OP-TMF) tests were also performed at different maximum temperatures and constraint factors. Experimental results demonstrate that at high temperature the coating increases the LCF lifetime of A356.0 alloy at higher strain amplitude and decreases it at lower strain amplitude. At LCF situation, thicker coating has more detrimental effect. However, the coating increases significantly the OP-TMF lifetime. To analyze the failure mechanisms, the fracture surfaces of specimens were investigated by scanning electron microscopy. The fractography of surfaces showed that the failure mechanism of TBC system in coated A356.0 alloy was separations of coating layers in the interface of the substrate and the bond coat layer. This was observed on both high temperature LCF and OP-TMF conditions.