Abstract The mechanical properties of plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coating （TBC） play a vital role in governing their lifetime and performance. This work investigated the microstructural and mechanical properties of TBC with high tem- perature treatment at 1 400℃ by scanning electron microscopy and indentation. We calculated elastic modulus and hardness through the application of Weibull statistics analysis. The results indicate that the microstructure of ceramic coat- ing will change continuously at high temperature, and accordingly the porosity decreases due to the grain growths and crack closes. In addition, the elastic mod- ulus and hardness nonlinearly go up with the heat treatment time and go down with increasing porosity. This demonstrates that the microstructural evolution and porosity of TBC are caused by high temperature treatment, and as a result its mechanical properties are influenced.
Fabrication of micro gratings using a femtosecond laser exposure system is experimentally investigated for the electron moire method. Micro holes and lines are firstly etched for parameter study. Grating profile is theoretically optimized to form high quality moire patterns. For a demonstration, a parallel grating is fabricated on a specimen of quartz glass. The minimum line width and the distance between two adjacent lines are both set to be 1 μm, and the frequency of grating is 500 lines/ram. The experimental results indicate that the quality of gratings is good and the relative error of the gratings pitch is about 1.5%. Based on molte method, scanning electron microscope （SEM） moire patterns are observed clearly, which manifests that gratings fabricated with the femtosecond laser exposure is suitable for micro scale deformation measurement.
Gaosheng YanJianguo ZhuYanlong HuangWenfen HaoYanjie Li
Thermal barrier coating(TBC)systems are widely used in industrial gas-turbine engines.However,premature failures have impaired the use of TBCs and cut down their lifetime,which requires a better understanding of their failure mechanisms.In the present study,experimental studies of isothermal cycling are firstly carried out with the observation and estimation of microstructures.According to the experimental results,a finite element model is established for the analysis of stress perpendicular to the TBC/BC interface.Detailed residual stress distributions in TBC are obtained to reflect the influence of mechanical properties,oxidation,and interfacial roughness.The calculated results show that the maximum tensile stress concentration appears at the peak of TBC and continues to increase with thermal cycles.Because of the microstructural characteristics of plasma-sprayed TBCs,cracks initialize in tensile stress concentration(TSC)regions at the peaks of TBC and propagate along the TBC/BC interface resulting in the spallation of TBC.Also,the inclusion of creep is crucial to failure prediction and is more important than the inclusion of sintering in the simulation.
Determining the interfacial properties of thermal barrier coatings(TBCs) is imperative for their durability evaluation and further improvements. A ceramic coating(topcoat) and a NiCoCrALY bondcoat were atmospheric-plasma-sprayed(APS) on a stainless steel substrate. A modified three-point bending test was adopted to initiate and propagate the topcoat/bondcoat(TC/BC)interfacial crack. After a complete delamination, the fracture surfaces were examined by an optical microscope, which shows that the cracking plane was merely on the TC/BC interface. Based on the experimental results of load–displacement and crack length–displacement,the strain energy release rate G for crack propagation was calculated, and the averaged magnitude was 77.1 J/m^2.Repeatable results have indicated that the method can be used for the evaluation of interfacial fracture toughness in thermal barrier coatings and other multi-layer structures.
