Investigation of effect of residual stress and interlayer in PVD multilayer TiAlN coating by finite element analysis

Titanium aluminium nitride is a thin hard coating that is industrially applied using the physical vapour deposition (PVD) route. In this work finite element analysis (FEA) has been employed to evaluate the thermal residual stress in PVD multilayer TiAlN resulted during deposition process. These stresses are beneficial as they increase the strength of coating, but higher values of stress can lead to failure in the coating. The radial and shear residual stresses were evaluated at the free radial edges for different thickness of coatings to demonstrate the influence of coating thickness. The influence of interlayer on residual stress was also investigated. The radial and shear stresses were calculated for different thicknesses, thermal expansion ratios and Young's moduli of interlayer. The results indicated that the interlayer has the highest influence on thermal residual stresses. © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.