The fast fracture of the coating will result in the local straining of the substrate with an extremely

high rate during a very short time that needed for the crack propagating in the coating. A large
amount of experimental work have shown that increasing strain rate has the same effect as lowering
temperature in inhibiting the plastic deformation, i.e. promoting their ductile-to-brittle (DBT)
transition [48e50]. Employing the concept of thermally activated plastic flow, the normal rate-
controlling deformation mechanism is given by Ref. [50]. ε_ ¼ ε_0 exp DG kT ¼ ε_0 exp DF Vtt kT (4)
t ¼ tt þ ta (5) where t is the total shear stress required to sustain the deformation. ta is the athermal
contribution to the total stress, resulting from long-range internal stresses impeding the plastic flow,
and ta is nearly independent on temperature and strain-rate. tt is the thermal component of the
total stress, i.e. tt accounts for the stress needed to overcome the short-range