Fatigue performance of DIARC® plasma coated bonded metal specimens

The fatigue performance of DIARC® vacuum plasma surface treatment for titanium, stainless-steel and aluminium structural bonding was tested with double lap shear test specimens. In the metal surface treatment, a nanoscale DIARC Bindo coating is deposited on the substrates in a vacuum chamber. The DIARC-treated surface is ready for bonding and does not require any additional treatments, chemicals or primers containing hazardous CrVI chromium. Finite element method was used in analysing the test specimens. The tests were performed at room temperature dry and at room temperature after hot and wet exposure. The specimens were cycled with constant amplitude loading until failure or until 10 million cycles. The fatigue performance of the DIARC coating was found acceptable. There were no interfacial failures between the DIARC coating and metal or between the DIARC coating and adhesive. The residual strengths of all specimens after 10 million cycles were comparable to the static strength.