ABSTRACT
Hard and wear-resistant coatings have been successfully applied to
cutting tool inserts to prolong tool life in machining applications [1,
2]. They are increasingly used under more challenging conditions
such as high-speed cutting to increase productivity, cutting without
coolant for environmental reasons and/or machining hard-to-cut
materials such as advanced Ti alloys or Ni-based superalloys due
to their increasing usage in aerospace applications [3, 4]. To
achieve long tool life under these conditions coatings need to be
multifunctional and display several interlinked characteristics to
minimisewear. Amechanical property approach tominimisingwear
based on the ratio of hardness of a material and its elastic modulus
described by Leyland and Matthews has been effective in general
tribological applications such as sliding or abrasion [5, 6].
