Numerical Simulation of Impact Behavior of Ceramic Coatings Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method

Abstract In this work, the impact behavior of an alumina spherical particle on alumina coating is modeled using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The effects of impact angle (0 deg, 30 deg, and 60 deg) and velocity (100 m/s, 200 m/s, and 300 m/s) on the morphology changes of the impact pit and impacting particle, and their associated stress and energy are investigated. The results show that the combination of impact angle of 0 deg and velocity of 300 m/s produces the highest penetration depth and largest stress and deformation in the coating layer, while the combination of 100 m/s and 60 deg causes the minimum damage to the coating layer. This is because the penetration depth is determined by the vertical velocity component difference between the impacting particle and the coating layer, but irrelevant to the horizontal component. The total energy of the coating layer increases with the time, while the internal energy increases with the time after some peak values, which is due to energy transmission from the spherical particle to the coating layer and the stress shock waves. The energy transmission from impacting particle to coating layer increases with the increasing particle velocity and decreases with the increasing inclined angle. The simulated impact pit morphology is qualitatively similar to the experimental observation. This work demonstrates that the SPH method is useful to analyze the impact behavior of ceramic coatings.