Effect of Coating Surface Finishing on Fatigue Behavior of C450 Steel CAPVD Coated with (Ti,Cr)N

The present study evaluated the effect of the surface quality of a custom 450 stainless steel substrate coated with a (Ti,Cr)N nanolayer by cathodic arc physical vapor deposition on fatigue performance in air and in a 3.5% NaCl solution. Scanning electron microscopy was used to locate crack origin sites and characterize the coating. X-ray diffraction was used to analyze the phase formation and measurement of residual stress in the coating. The results showed that the determined in plane residual stress is compressive, with amount of \(- 2.8 \pm 0.4\) GPa. Chemical mechanical polishing was used to decrease the coating surface roughness (R _a from 0.35 to 0.07 µm). This significantly decreased the area having a high stress concentration and delayed the appearance of micro-cracks in the coating during fatigue testing. The results showed that when the material is tested under axial loading at a maximum alternating stress of 555 to 930 MPa, the fatigue strength of coated specimens with polished surfaces increased 10.6% in air and 26.7% in NaCl solution over the coated specimens with normal surfaces. Post-treatment of the coating increased the fatigue strength 3.5% in air and 10.1% in NaCl solution over the uncoated specimens and the weakness of CAPVD coating was eliminated in the field of fatigue.