Modeling of thermal stresses in elastic multilayer coating systems

The performance and reliability of multilayer coating systems are strongly influenced by thermal stresses. The present study develops an alternative analytical model to predict the thermal stresses in elastic multilayer coating systems. An exact closed-form solution is obtained which is independent of the number of coating layers. In addition, with the definition of the coordinate system, the closed-form solution is concisely formulated. Specific results are calculated for thermal stresses in HfO2/SiO2 multilayer optical coatings, and a finite element analysis is performed to confirm the analytical results. The two results agree fairly well with each other. Also, when the thicknesses of the coating layers are much less than the substrate thickness, the approximate solution is obtained based on the exact closed-form solution, and its accuracy is examined.