Abstract
During the thermal cycling process in MCrAlY-YSZ thermal barrier coating system, stresses are produced at bondcoat (BC)-topcoat (TC) interface due to the mismatch of the thermal expansion coefficients of the two coating layers. The stresses at the interface are not a single value and can be affected by the coatings’ microstructure. In this paper, finite element (FE) modeling method was used to study the behavior of the stress distribution at the coatings’ interface. The influence of the pore structure in the ceramic TC and the micro bulge structure at the metal BC surface was investigated. The results showed that both structures can change the stress distribution. The pores played a “stone-in-river” role, which trapped higher stress around them and simultaneously reduced the size of the macro stress zones in TC. The micro bulges at the TC/BC interface also trapped high stresses which could cause more interaction between TC cracks and BC roughness.
