Abstract
Fundamental understanding of relationships between coating microstructure and thermal conductivity is important to be able to understand the influence of coating defects, such as delaminations and pores, on heat insulation in thermal barrier coatings. Object-Oriented Finite element analysis (OOF) has recently been shown as an effective tool for evaluating thermo-mechanical material behaviour, because of this method’s capability to incorporate the inherent material microstructure as an input to the model. In this work, this method was combined with multi-variate statistical modelling. The statistical model was used for screening and tentative relationship building and the finite element model was thereafter used for verification of the statistical modelling results. Characterisation of the coatings included microstructure, porosity and crack content and thermal conductivity measurements. A range of coating architectures was investigated including High purity Yttria stabilised Zirconia, Dysprosia stabilised Zirconia and Dysprosia stabilised Zirconia with porosity former. Evaluation of the thermal conductivity was conducted using the Laser Flash Technique. The microstructures were examined both on as-sprayed samples as well as on heat treated samples. The feasibility of the combined two modelling approaches, including their capability to establish relationships between coating microstructure and thermal conductivity, is discussed.
