SURFACE ANALYSIS AND MECHANICAL BEHAVIOUR OF POLYSILOXANE COATING ON ALLOY STEEL SUBSTRATE

This project deals about developing anti-scratch coating for automotive body. Automobiles undergo severe scratches on body and to some extend on the wind shields. An experimental investigation is carried out over automotive body to improve the scratch resistant using the newly developed polysiloxane coating. The coating process used is spray coating. Polysiloxane coatings are industrial protective and maintenance coating which is characterized by abrasion, chemical, extreme UV and high temperature. Scratch properties of polysiloxane coatings are critical in their application in many fields which require long-term protection and aesthetics. Critical input parameters of spray coating process such as nozzle distance, spraying time and pressure is optimized and corresponding output parameters are coating thickness, surface roughness, coating micro hardness, abrasion rate are studied. Taguchi`s L9 orthogonal array and Analysis of variance is used to conduct the experiment for finding the optimum process parameter. The coated samples will be examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for micro structure analysis. Phase and chemical composition will be carried out using XRD and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDAX).Optical microscopy is used to examine the microstructure of the coated samples. The Vickers Hardness Test will be taken to measure the micro hardness of the coating .In addition to it the adhesion, corrosive, wear test will be studied.