Fatigue Characterization of Plasma Spray Coated Composites

In this work we study the fatigue behavior of plasma sprayed metallic coatings on graphite reinforced polymer matrix composites. In the absence of any standards for testing of coatings, the ASTM standard for composites was adopted. Stress-life curves for some of these coatings have been presented and discussed. Our initial results show potentials for fatigue resistance in spite of the materials being widely dissimilar. The coatings appear to be as good as (or superior to) the substrate in failure, i.e. in all the samples tested failure occurred in the substrate first.