High performance computing of coating-substrate systems

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