Tensile adhesion testing methodology for thermally sprayed coatings

The structure of thermally sprayed coatings consists of lamellae which are oriented parallel to the substrate surface. The lamellae separate and fracture by distinctive mechanisms which are reflected in the failure morphology, and these may be described as adhesive (between the coating and substrate), cohesive (within the coating), or mixed mode. There is a large variability in the failure stress for any nominally identical group of coatings. A lower bound for the fracture toughness of alumina coatings can be calculated as 0.2 MNm exp -3/2. The coating strength values may also be treated as belonging to the statistical distribution of the Weibull function. The Weibull modulus of the coating strength varied from 1.4 to 3.8. This analysis infers that the flaw size within coatings is highly variable and that the flaws are nonuniformly dispersed. The present work focuses on the question of whether tensile adhesion tests are an appropriate testing method for thermally sprayed materials.