Abstract
For 6 years, we have developed corrosion resistant coatings for the marine structural steels by using a thermal spray technique. Such a coating requires primarily impermeability and secondarily cleanliness. In order to make denser and highly corrosion resistant coatings, we selected spray materials and improved fabrication processes. In addition, some new methods were designed to evaluate the sprayed particle’s state and coating properties with high accuracy and sensitivity. An inert gas shroud system was attached with the commercial HVOF apparatus and this attachment enabled inflight spray particles to be accelerated over 750 m·s-1 and simultaneously to avoid to be oxidized. The coating of HastelloyC nickel base alloy by this process had zero through porosity and 0.2 mass% of oxygen content, leading to be comparable to the bulk material of HastelloyC in terms of corrosion resistance. This coating, formed on steel, demonstrated an excellent protective performance over 10 months in the marine exposure test.
