High performance computing of coating-substrate systems

The influence of external loads on the stability of coating-substrate syste ms can be analysed by the finite element method. A new FEM-code, suitable f or parallel computer systems with an arbitrary number of processors, has be en developed and tested on different coating-substrate systems. The three-d imensional FEM discretisation of the coated tool reaches more than 800000 e lements with approximately 2 500 000 unknowns. This way, deformations and s tresses caused by external loads can be computed on a microscopic scale wit h sufficient accuracy and detail resolution. The presented method can contr ibute to a better understanding of the coated tool's behaviour under specif ic load situations, to the development of newly designed layer systems and to the judgement about the suitability of certain layer systems and tool ge ometries for specific industrial applications. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.