A systematic finite element analysis (FEA) on the subsequently incident particles which refer to the particles depositing after the formation of the first layer coating is conducted in this study to clarify the bonding mechanism inside the cold sprayed coating. A simplified particle impact model is proposed and the simulated results based on this model demonstrate that substrate hardness exerts some effects on the deformation behavior of the subsequently incident particles. Hard substrate makes these particles deform intensively but using soft substrate enables them to achieve a slight deformation. At the same time, it is also found that substrate hardness plays its best role only when the formed coating is thin, as the development of the coating, the particle deformation behavior becomes more and more insensitive to the substrate hardness. The multi-particle impact simulation based on Eulerian method is also performed and reaches the same conclusion, confirming the accuracy of the simplified model. Besides, it is also found that when the velocity is increased to a hypervelocity, excessive deformation occurs in the formed coatings due to the impact of the subsequently incident particles. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.