Interfacial adhesion characterization of plasma coatings by V(z) inversion technique and comparison to interfacial indentation

This paper presents the development of V(z) inversion technique and its application to quantitative determination of interface adhesion by measuring interface tangential stiffness parameter KT. The measurement is performed in two steps on an air plasma sprayed bronze–aluminum alloy coating (on a steel substrate) having different adhesion levels: the determination of the coating elastic constants and the determination of the interface tangential stiffness KT are performed by optimizing the inverted angular-frequency reflectance function R(θ,f). The results obtained by the V(z) inversion are then compared to mechanical testing by interfacial indentation on the same sample. The same behavior (quality of interface adhesion) can be seen by both methods: the coating adhesion decreases as the interfacial stiffness parameter KT decreases.