In order to guarantee their protective function, thermal sprayings must be free from cracks, which expose the substrate surface to e.g. corrosive media. Cracks in thermal sprayings are usually formed because of tensile residual stresses. Most commonly, the crack occurrence is determined after the thermal spraying process by examination of metallographic cross-sections of the coating. Recent efforts focus on in situ monitoring of crack formation by means of acoustic emission analysis. However, the acoustic signals related to crack propagation can be absorbed by the noise of the thermal spraying process. In this work, a high-frequency impulse measurement technique was applied to separate different acoustic sources by visualizing the characteristic signal of crack formation via quasi-real-time Fourier analysis. The investigations were carried out on a twin wire arc spraying process, utilizing FeCrBSi as a coating material. The impact of the process parameters on the acoustic emission spectrum was studied. Acoustic emission analysis enables to obtain global and integral information on the formed cracks. The coating morphology as well as coating defects were inspected using light microscopy on metallographic cross-sections. Additionally, the resulting crack patterns were imaged in 3D by means of X-ray micro-tomography.

The homogeneity of thermal spray plumes is mostly dependent on the type of feedstock used. Powdery feedstocks, for example, promote homogeneity. If in-flight particles are atomized from a melting bath, however, as in twin wire arc spraying (TWAS), the spray jet is less homogeneous due to the fact that particles are generated by the impingement of an airflow on the melting tips of electrically conducting wires. This work aims to contribute to the understanding of the initiation of such particles in the TWAS process. To that end, cored wires filled with W-rich particles were sprayed, then the process was halted and the wire tips were examined to analyze how the filling powder interacts with the melted part of the velum. 3D tomograms show that the resolidified melt bath is interspersed with spherical and irregular-shaped W-rich particles. The irregular shape implies a partial melting of the W-rich particles.

This paper describes the development of detonation-sprayed aluminum-matrix composite coatings reinforced with boron carbide. The goal is to achieve a homogeneous coating structure with low porosity, low oxide content, and high concentration of embedded carbides. Tensile tests of various types were conducted and different stages of deformation were analyzed using micro computed tomography, a 3D imaging technique that reveals the formation of cracks in real time.

Thermal spraying is a material processing technique, which is based on the combination of thermal and kinetic energy. The used feedstock is melted in a hot flame and the melt is atomized and accelerated by means of atomization or process gases. The formed particles are rapidly solidified and consolidate to form splats as they hit a pre-treated substrate. The splats pile one-on-top-of-other forming lamellas and creating the final coating. In the work presented here a combination of cored wire (WC as filling powder) and massive wire (copper) were simultaneously sprayed using the twin wire arc spraying (TWAS) process. 3D micro tomography was used in order to gain knowledge about splat formation and layer build-up. Due to the high attenuation coefficient of tungsten in comparison with copper and carbon tungsten-rich particles and splats can easily be spotted in the tomogram of the coating layer. It turns out that besides irregular formed flat splats also ball-shaped particles exist in the coating layer which suggests that the spherical particles impacted on the substrate in an un-molten state. By 3D data processing tungsten-rich particles were visualized to analyze their spatial distributions as well as their geometric parameters were quantified. This work aims at contributing to the understanding of spraying processes.