Thermal and Mechanical Behaviors of High Temperature Coatings

Abstract: With superior oxidation and corrosion resistance, metallic coatings (i.e. diffusion coatings and MCrAlX coatings) are widely used to protect hot components made of superalloys in turbine engines. Two issues are critically important for the coating at high temperatures: thermal property related to oxidation/corrosion behavior and microstructure stability, and mechanical properties (e.g. creep and fatigue). The aim of this project is to develop better understanding of the thermal and mechanical behaviors of metallic coatings on superalloys and to improve the accuracy of prediction of their lifetime by thermodynamic modeling. The present work includes an investigation on the oxidation behavior of MCrAlX coating with a new lifetimeprediction model and a study on the influence of diffusion coatings on creep and fatigue behaviors of the superalloy IN792.Experiments on isothermal and thermal cycling oxidation were designed to investigate the oxidation behavior of a HVOF CoNiCrAlYSi coating on superalloy IN792. It is found that the oxidation behaviors of the coating are related to its thermodynamic property. A diffusion model has been established using the homogenization models in the DICTRA software and taking into consideration of the influence of surface oxidation, coating-substrate interdiffusion and diffusion blocking effect caused by internal voids and oxides. The simulation results show an improved accuracy of lifetime prediction by introducing the diffusion blocking effect.Microstructural evolution during creep process at high temperatures was studied in different diffusion coatings (NiAl and PtAl). It is found that the inward diffusion of aluminum controls the thickening rate of the diffusion coatings. The developed coatings displayed two types of mechanical behavior - being easily plasticized or cracked - dependent on temperature and type of coating, and therefore could be considered as non-load carrying material during creep test. The influence of cracking of PtAl coating on the high-cycle fatigue (HCF) behavior of the IN792 was also investigated. The results show that precracking of the coating prior to the fatigue test has little influence on the fatigue limit of specimens with thin coating (50 μm) but lowers the fatigue limit of specimens with thick coating (70 μm). The through-coating crack has enough mobility to penetrate into the substrate and causes fatigue failure only when the driving force for crack propagation is increased above a critical value due to a higher applied stress or a larger crack length (thicker coating).