ABSTRACT
Quantitative determination of the adhesion strength of hard coatings on a metal substrate is a difficult task and a satisfactory solution of this problem has not yet been attained. For practical application, the adhesion properties of a coating system are usually characterized by the critical load measured in a scratch test or by micro-indenter data [1-4]. The values obtained with both methods are a mixture of the adhesion strength and contributions from the plastic and/or elastic properties of the substrate and the coating materials [5, 6]. The load at the coating/substrate interface is more in the form of compressive stress than tensile or shear stress, and thus, the interpretation of results is complex and not well developed with respect to the determination of adhesion strength data [3].
