The influence of ZrO2/20%Y2O3 and Al2O3 deposited coatings to the behavior of an aluminum alloy subjected to mechanical shock

Aluminum alloys are used in the aerospace industry due to their good mechanical properties and their low density compared with the density of steels. Usually the parts made of aluminum alloys contribute to the structural frame of aircrafts and they must withstand static and variable mechanical loads and also mechanical loads applied in a very short time which determine different phenomenon's in the material behavior then static or fatigue loads. This paper analysis the resilience of a 2024 aluminum alloy subjected to shock loads and the way how a coating can improve its behavior. For improving the behavior two coatings were considered: Al2O3 with 99.5% purity and ZrO2/20%Y2O3. The coatings were deposited on the base material by plasma spraying. The samples with and without coating were subject to mechanical shock to determine the resilience of the materials and the cracks propagation was investigated using SEM analysis. To highlight the physical phenomenon's that appear in the samples during the mechanical shock, explicit finite element analysis were done using Ansys 14.5 software.