Abstract
This paper is a first report of thermally sprayed Ti 60 Cr 32 Si 8 (at-%) alloy coating. It has been reported previously that such an alloy assumes quasicrystallinity in presence of oxygen, when made to undergo rapid quenching. In these cases, either TiO or SiO2 is used as an ingredient in the alloy so that it can act as a source of oxygen. This paper describes an attempt to produce a quasicrystal by thermally spraying the alloy in air, i.e. in presence of oxygen, either by flame or atmospheric plasma spraying. The spray parameters for both the processes have been varied in the experiment in a wide range. A vacuum plasma sprayed coating served as the reference. This investigation includes a detailed study of the microstructure and phases by optical microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X–Ray diffractometry (XRD), microhardness and porosity. An estimate of the composition of the coating has been done using Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy (GDOES). The parametric variations have been correlated with the coating microstructure. It has been found in the study that there is a likelihood of obtaining quasicrystalline phase by atmospheric plasma spraying of this alloy under favourable parametric conditions. The tribological properties of these coatings were studied using a ball on disc reciprocating tribometer.
