Internal stress analysis for single and multilayered coating systems using the boundary element method

Various thin-coating films are designed and utilized for industrial applications to improve machining performance due to better temperature and wear resistant properties than their substrate counterparts. However, the widespread experimental research on thin coatings underlies a general lack of modeling efforts, which can accurately and efficiently predict the coating and thin film performance. In this paper, the boundary element method (BEM) for 2D elastostatic problems is studied for the analysis of single and multilayered coating systems. The nearly singular integrals, which is the primary obstacle associated with the BEM formulations, are dealt efficiently by using a general nonlinear transformation technique. For the test problems studied, very promising results are obtained when the thickness of coated layers is in the orders of 1.0E−6 to 1.0E−9, which is sufficient for modeling most coated systems in the micro- or nano-scales.