Thermal stress relaxation of nonhomogeneous coatings

Nonhomogeneous coatings (NCs) are new type of engineering structures that is not yet fully understood. One important aspect in the mechanical analysis of NCs is to determine the gradient distribution that creates the maximumthermal stress relaxation. This paper employs numerical analysis using the fini te element method and experimental analysis using moi re interference to study the stress distributioninNCs. Attention focused on the edge effect stresses in the coating/substrate structures and their dependence on the di fferent gradient distributions of this new kind of composite structure.