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Evolution of Lamellar Interface Cracks During Isothermal Cyclic Test of Plasma-Sprayed 8YSZ Coating with a Columnar-Structured YSZ Interlayer

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Abstract

The failure of plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coatings (TBC) usually occurs through spalling of ceramic coating. The crack evolution during thermal cycling of TBC is directly associated with its spalling. In this paper, the cracks in TBC along the direction of the interface between ceramic coating and bond coat were examined from cross-section of TBC experienced different numbers of thermal cycle, and crack number and the total length of cracks were measured to aim at understanding the failure mechanism. TBC consists of cold-sprayed NiCoCrAlTaY bond coat on IN738 superalloy and double layered plasma-sprayed 8YSZ with a columnar grain structured YSZ interlayer of about 20 μm thick and about 230 μm lamellar YSZ. With each isothermal cyclic test, the TBC samples were kept at 1150 °C for 26 min hold and then cooled down to a temperature less than 80 °C in 4 min by air forced cooling. Results showed that cracks propagated primarily within lamellar-structured YSZ over the columnar YSZ along lamellar interface. The measurement from the cross-section revealed that crack number and total crack length apparently increased with the increase of the number of thermal cycle. It was found that cracks with a length less than a typical size of 200 μm accounted for the majority of cracks despite the number of thermal cycle during the test. A crack initiation and propagation model for plasma-sprayed TBC is proposed with a uniform distribution of circular cracks. The propagatable cracks form homogeneously within plasma-sprayed porous YSZ coating at the early stage of thermal cycling and propagate at an identical rate during thermal cycling. Only a few of large cracks are formed before most cracks reach to the critical size for multi-cracks linking-up. The propagation of most cracks to the critical size will leads to the rapid crack bridging and subsequent spalling of top ceramic TBC.

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Acknowledgement

The project was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB625100) and National Nature Science Foundation of China (Granted No. 50725101).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shannxi, People’s Republic of China

    Chang-Jiu Li, Guan-Jun Yang & Cheng-Xin Li

  2. Xi’an Thermal Power Research Institute Co. Ltd., Xi’an, Shannxi, People’s Republic of China

    Yong Li

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  1. Chang-Jiu Li
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Correspondence to Chang-Jiu Li.

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This article is an invited paper selected from presentations at the 5th Asian Thermal Spray Conference (ATSC 2012) and has been expanded from the original presentation. ATSC 2012 was held at the Tsukuba International Congress Center, Ibaraki, Japan, November 26-28, 2012, and was organized by the Japan Thermal Spray Society and the Asian Thermal Spray Society.

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Li, CJ., Li, Y., Yang, GJ. et al. Evolution of Lamellar Interface Cracks During Isothermal Cyclic Test of Plasma-Sprayed 8YSZ Coating with a Columnar-Structured YSZ Interlayer. J Therm Spray Tech 22, 1374–1382 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11666-013-9965-0

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