Microhardness of laser ablated alumina coating on Ti-6Al-4V

Alumina coated on Titanium alloys find wide tribological applications due to the improvement in hardness of substrate. This paper presents the effect of deposition of alumina by pulsed laser ablation on Vickers hardness of Ti-6Al-4V substrate. Nd: YAG laser of wavelength 1064nm is used with sintered alumina disc as target for ablation. The variation of Vickers microhardness with load in Ti-6Al-4V shows indentation size effect. Proportional Specimen Resistance (P.S.R) model is applied to separate load -independent hardness from the load -dependent hardness. Composite hardness of Alumina coated Ti-6Al-4V is measured for different laser processing conditions. The film hardness has been separated from the composite hardness of the film-substrate system by the use of an approach based on the law of area of mixtures model taking into an account of ISE, due to proportional specimen resistance of the material to indentation. Film hardness of different films produced by varying the target — substrate distance is presented. As the film thickness increases its hardness decreases as compared to bulk hardness. These studies will be useful in the selection of appropriate coating thickness and substrate hardness to achieve a required composite hardness in the design and production of wear-resistant parts of engineering devices.