Determination of Interfacial Fracture Toughness of Thermal Spray Coatings by Indentation

Adhesion is an important and basic property for thermal spray coatings. The standard tensile test method “ISO 14916” is usually used to evaluate the adhesive strength of coatings. On the other hand, the indentation test method has some advantages to evaluate the interfacial fracture toughness as the adhesive strength, arising from the following reasons: the test procedure and the specimen preparation are easy in comparison with the typical testing method. Collaborative research has been conducted by “Committee on Standard Development” in the Japan Thermal Spray Society to establish a standard test method for evaluating interfacial fracture toughness of thermal spray coatings using a conventional Vickers indenter. This article reports the differences among collaborators in round-robin tests performed in this committee and discusses the validity of the test method and test conditions with respect to the test results and finite element analyses. Comparison among collaborators reveals that interfacial fracture toughness can be obtained with a small scattering from the indentation test under constraints found on the basis of the results.