Characterization of thermally sprayed copper and numerically supported residual stress determination by the incremental hole-drilling method

This contribution deals with the determination of the mechanical and thermal properties of thermally sprayed copper. To this end, a comprehensive characterization is carried out by temperature-dependent tensile, three-point bending and caloric tests within a temperature range from 293 K up to 1173 K. The obtained data can be implemented in models for commercial FE software for the simulation of cooling and deformation processes during thermal spraying and the resulting residual stresses. For this purpose, thick coatings were manufactured by wire arc spraying. The resulting volume was further processed by electrical discharge machining into suitable test specimens. Reference specimens from the corresponding solid material were also examined for evaluating the morphological features of the coating. Finally, the residual stress of a thermally sprayed coating system (copper on steel substrate) was determined by the numerically supported hole-drilling strain gage method, using the obtained material parameters. As a result, stress distributions in the coated substrate were computable. •Thermally sprayed copper (Cu 98.7) was characterized in order to create an adequate database for FEM simulations.•The special morphology of thermally sprayed materials requires methods using sufficient test cross sections.•Tensile modulus, flexural modulus and thermal conductivity were determined in a temperature range from 293 K up to 1173 K.•Based on the determined characteristics, the numerical supported incremental hole-drilling method was carried out.