NUMERICAL APPROACH TO MICROSTRUCTURAL CHARACTERIZATIONS FOR DENSE AND POROUS THERMAL BARRIER COATINGS

ABSTRACT. During spray coating, especially in an air plasma spray (APS), pores, cracks, and splat boundaries are developed and those factors exert influence on thermomechanical properties such as elastic modulus, thermal conductivity, and coefficient of thermal expansion. Moreover, the thermo mechanical properties are crucial elements to determine the thermoelastic characteristics, for instance, temperature distribution, displacements, and stresses. Two types of thermal barrier coating (TBC) model, the dense and porous microstructures, are taken into account for the analysis of microstructural characterizations. TriplexProTM-200 system was applied to prepare TBC samples, and the METECO 204 C-NS powder is adopted for the relatively porous microstructure and METECO 204 NS powder for the dense microstructure in the top coat of TBCs. Governing partial differential equations were derived based on the thermoelastic theory and approximate estimates for the thermoelastic characteristics were obtained using a finite volume method for the governing equations. 1