  Developing a new class of coating materials is necessary to meet the
increasing demands of energy and defense-related technologies, aerospace
engineering, and harsh environmental conditions. Functional-based coatings,
such as ceramic-metal nanolaminates, have gained popularity due to their
ability to be customized according to specific requirements. To design and
develop advanced coatings with the necessary functionalities, it is crucial to
understand the effects of various parameters on the mechanical and tribological
properties of these coatings. In this study, we investigate the impact of
penetration depth, individual layer thickness, and ceramic-metal ratio on the
mechanical and tribological properties of ceramic-metal nanolaminates,
particularly NbC/Nb. Our findings reveal that the thickness of the individual
metallic and ceramic layers significantly affects the coatings' properties.
However, some models exhibited punctures on the top ceramic layer, which
altered the scratching behavior and reduced the impact of layer thickness on
it. This is because the top ceramic layer's thickness is too low, and the
indenter can easily puncture it instead of pushing the ceramic atoms. The
minimum thickness required to resist indentation is called the critical
thickness, which depends on the indentation size and penetration depth. In the
latter part of this paper, we employed machine learning to reduce computational
costs, and the model predicts the friction coefficient with an R-squared value
of 0.958.
