Fatigue and Contact Fatigue Resistance of Thin Hard-Coated Components

In this paper a review of the state of the art on the study of the fatigue and the contact/rolling contact fatigue (RCF) resistance of thin hard-coated components is provided. Physical and chemical vapor deposition (PVD and CVD) methods are used to deposit such films. A fair number of references reports experimental data highlighting the improvements achieved with coating deposition on both steels and light alloys. Numerical modelling has also been devoted to shedding light on the behaviour of coated components and reliable previsional procedures have been arranged to foresee the number of cycles until fatigue damage initiation and failure.