Abstract
Thermally sprayed abradable coatings are essential for improving the performance of gas turbine engines. They act as a protective barrier between the stationary casing and rotating blades. Though a lot of research has been done on abradable coatings, little attention has been paid to comprehending wear mechanisms in the abradable-blade tip interaction. The goal of this project is to create a cost-effective test rig that can evaluate different thermally sprayed abradable coatings and understand how they interact with titanium blade tips under application-relevant conditions. Blade tip velocity, incursion rates, incursion depths, reaction forces, and interfacial temperatures are some of the inputs and outputs that the testing rig can provide. Aiming to validate the rig, this study examined the wear behavior of aluminum, thermally sprayed polyester, and AlSi-40Polyester abradable coating. The reaction forces for aluminum and polyester were overall higher when compared to AlSi-40Polyester. However, thermally sprayed polyester showed the highest interfacial temperatures of all materials tested. The difference in the reaction forces and interfacial temperature correlates well with the different wear mechanisms and thermal conductivities. Overall, the equipment showed to be a promising pre-screening methodology to evaluate and develop novel thermal spray abradable coatings.
