Low cycle fatigue of doped tetrahedral amorphous carbon coatings by repetitive micro scratch tests

In contrast to the conventional progressive scratch testing where load is increased up to a critical damage level, the repetitive scratch testing is an assessment of coating behavior under repeatedly applied subcritical load. It often represents a better approximation to actual application conditions of well-designed coating systems where overcritical conditions typically do not occur. In this work, the cyclic micro scratch behavior of differently doped amorphous carbon coatings with similar coating thicknesses were studied using repetitive scratch tests at loads that correspond to 40 %, 60 % and 80 % of the critical loads from progressive scratch testing. Depending on the doping element, the structural and mechanical properties changed, in some cases considerably, which also had a clear effect on the test results. The damage progression was examined using optical microscopy, friction coefficient, and residual depth measurements. The progression of failure phenomena was categorized into different stages. Furthermore, the critical number of cycles for coating failure was recorded at the various load levels. For the identification of the critical cycles, the use of the deviation of the friction coefficient from its mean value has proven to be a valuable parameter. The approach of testing at different load levels allows the creation of low cycle fatigue curves to evaluate the coating behavior. It was found that the hardness and residual stresses of the coatings had different effects on the lifetime of the coatings at the various load levels, i.e. higher hardness and residual compressive stresses were only beneficial for moderate stress levels with low plastic substrate deformation. The results demonstrate that the cyclic scratch test is a powerful tool for comparative damage assessment at different load scenarios.