Investigation on Relationship Between Microstructural Characteristics and Mechanical Properties of Wire Arc Sprayed Zn-Al Coating

The aim of this study is to characterize the mechanical behavior of wire-arc sprayed Zn-Al coatings and correlate the results with microstructure via computational techniques. High-resolution microstructural images obtained by SEM were imported into NIST-developed FEA software, which calculates macroscale properties based on user-selected features such as voids, pores, cracks, and splat boundaries. To assess the validity of the approach, elastic modulus was measured various ways and the results compared to the simulated value. Resonant frequency analysis provided the most accurate measurement, which was found to be closest to the simulated value.