Designing Advanced Coatings for Wear Protection

Improved knowledge of the ways in which the structures, properties, and behaviour of coated materials are interrelated, as well as technical advances in the production of specific layers, constitutes a basis on which advanced coatings with improved properties and wear resistance can be realised. Many of the relations between constitution, microstructure, properties, and application behaviour, elaborated for bulk materials, can also be used to understand the behaviour of layer materials and to optimise coatings. After a survey and a classification of the most common protective layer materials, typical examples of advanced coating concepts with improved properties, including gradient layers, multicomponent mixed layers, metastable layer materials, multi/ayers, and multiphase layer materials, are discussed.