Investigation on the corrosion behavior of physical vapor deposition coated high speed steel

Abstract

This work emphasizes on the influence of the TiN and AlCrN coatings fabricated on high speed steel form tool using physical vapor deposition technique. The surface microstructure of the coatings was studied using scanning electron microscope. Hardness and corrosion studies were also performed using Vickers hardness test and salt spray testing, respectively. The salt spray test results suggested that the bilayer coated (TiN- bottom layer and AlCrN- top layer) substrate has undergone less amount of corrosion, and this is attributed to the dense microstructure. In addition to the above, the influence of the above coatings on the machining performance of the high speed steel was also evaluated and compared with that of the uncoated material and the results suggested that the bilayered coating has undergone very low weight loss when compared with that of the uncoated substrate depicting enhanced wear resistance.