The use of thin, hard coatings in tribological applications has become
more widespread. Thus the need to fully understand the relationships
between the intrinsic properties of the coating, the properties of the
coating/substrate composite and the tribological performance of the c
omposite in different tribological systems has become more pressing. T
he present paper contributes to this effort by presenting and discussi
ng the use of a selected number of physical and mechanical tests to ob
tain a general characterization of the tribological properties of a co
ated material: its tribological profile. The tribological tests includ
e dry sliding wear, solid particle erosion and microabrasion. Even if
the emphasis of the present paper is put on tribological characterizat
ion of thin, hard coatings, some of the current techniques frequently
employed to characterize some of the more general properties of a coat
ing, e.g. thickness, hardness, adhesion, residual stress state, etc.,
are treated. Examples from tribology profile determination and general
characterization are collected from PVD and CVD coating systems.