Design for Manufacturing of Cemented Carbide Coated Components Toward High Wear and Impact Resistance Performance

Wear- yet impact-resistant demand is a big challenge for coated components under heavy-load service condition. To solve this high-performance manufacturing problem, a new strategy of design for manufacturing (DFM) with integrated design and processing is developed to incorporate processing effect on final performance via the pivot role of surface integrity. An impact performance model and the impact tester are constructed for a component with coated flat block/bulk cylinder mates for potential application in hydraulic machinery. A WC-12Ni/Ni60A two-layer coating on 17-4PH martensitic steel substrate is designed with thermal spray process. Impact crater depth, surface hardening, and residual stresses are identified as major surface integrity parameters determining wear/impact performance by the modeling with testing. The design parameters of geometry, material, and structure are quantitatively linked to the final performance by a process signature (PS) correlative analysis on the identified surface integrity to internal material loading of plastic/elastic strain energies. The PS correlation posts coating thickness as a high-sensitivity parameter for design, facilitating a buffering effect of reduced peak stresses among the coating-substrate system. The DFM optimization is understood by irreversible thermodynamics as reducing energy dissipation of the internal material loading from the external impact loads. The manufacturing inverse problem is thus solved by material-oriented regularization (MOR) on the homologous PS correlations integrating the design and processing phases. The manufactured component, with optimal Ni60A interlayer thickness of 75–100 µm at a top WC-12Ni coating of 200 µm, achieves a desired performance of up to 6000 impacts under a nominal load of 15 kN.