Concept Optimization for Coating Application and Quality of APS Applied TBC on Gas Turbine Blades and Vanes

There are different concepts for thermal barrier coating (TBC) application that vary in the method of applying the coating layers. An analysis of the existing part portfolio sprayed with different coating concepts shows that there is a 75% difference in spray performance, depending on which concept is used. Optimizing performance can significantly reduce costs and time. This paper shows the effective use of offline programming tools in combination with a detailed coating process analysis to develop a time-optimized coating concept for vanes and blades. The validation of this optimized coating concept shows an improvement of more than 75% in spray performance leading to a coating time improvement of up to 40%.