Analysis of Stresses in Ti(C,N) Coatings Deposited on

WC-Co Hardmetal Cutting Tools Under Thermal Cycling

G. Valds1, C. Espinoza1, R.S. Coelho2, H. Pinto3, J. Garcia4 and E. Ramos-Moore1,*
1 Instituto de Fsica, Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
2 Depto. de Materiais, SENAI - CIMATEC, Brazil.
3 Universidade de So Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
4 Sandvik Machining Solutions, R&D Materials & Processes, Stockholm, Sweden.
* evramos@fis.puc.cl

ABSTRACT
We analyzed the residual and thermal stresses of Ti(C,N) coatings deposited
on WC-Co cutting tools during several thermal cycles in order to reproduce
working conditions. The stress analyses were performed in-situ by energy
dispersive X-ray diffraction using a white synchrotron beam and the stresses
were determined using the sin2 method. The obtained results can support the
design of coated tools with improved properties at interrupted cutting
operations by understanding the role of thermal cycling on the stresses and
subsequent generation of cracks in Ti(C,N) coatings.

Sin2 distributions (figure 3.b) are linearly fitted to calculate the in-plane stress.
Every plane has a stress associated with the penetration of the X-rays (). As
presented in figure 3.c.

EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
Sample description. Cemented carbide cutting tool (WC-Co) coated with
hard layers of Ti(C,N) and Al2O3 (Figure 1) fabricated by chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) techniques.

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of hard coating multilayer

deposited on cutting tools by CVD techniques .

X-ray Diffraction (XRD) Analysis. Synchrotron diffraction experiments

were performed by Energy-Dispersive (ED) XRD at the material science
beam line EDDI located in the BESSY storage ring of the Helmholtz-Zentrum
Berlin, Germany.
Figure 3: a) ED-XRD spectrum. b) Sin2 distributions. c)
Stresses over thermal cycles.

Experimental data shows a strong stress gradient in the Ti(C,N) layer which
increases over thermal cycles, with an increasing tension at the Ti(C,N)-WC
interface and sight decrease at the Ti(C,N)-Al2O3 interface, with stress at the
layer center being almost constant. During heating, this stress gradient is also
evidenced and seems to increase with several thermal cycles.

Figure 2. Experimental setup of measurements at the

EDDI beam line in BESSY Synchrotron.

Energy-dispersive diffraction relies upon a polychromatic X-ray beam, which

allows for the acquisition of complete energy resolved diffraction spectra. In
the spectrum, each diffraction line () stems from a certain energy ()
level, which can in turn be related to the interplanar lattice distance () via
Braggs law (Equation 1). The sin2 method consisted in varying the angle

and obtaining the in-plane stress () as presented in Equation 2, where 0 is

the stress-free lattice parameter and 1 and 2 /2 are the diffraction

elastic constant of the analyzed layer.

0
0

0.6199
1

sin []

1
2
2 sin
2

(1)

21

CONCLUSIONS
Residual tensions tend to increase with thermal cycles, which makes the
sample prone to cracking after repeated use in working conditions. Strong
stress gradients appear in the middle Ti(C,N) layer produced by differences in
thermal expansion coefficients of the different layer materials, being bigger in
Ti(C,N)-WC interface than in Ti(C,N)-Al2O3 interface. Under this conditions,
common weight-averaged estimations are not a valid approximations of
stresses of interlayer coatings.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

(2)

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Experimental data are resumed in Figure 3. As an example, Figure 3.a shows a
spectrum obtained by ED-XRD at a fixed angle . After determining the
intensity peaks associated with the Ti(C,N) layer, the energies of different
angles are converted to lattice distances with Equation 1.

This work was carried out in the framework of the BESSY proposal 2012-1-110859. E. RamosMoore thanks the financial support from the Project FONDECYT 11121630, Chile. H. Pinto
acknowledges the fundingof FAPESP(Process 2010/11391-2).

REFERENCES
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