Modelling the production and performance analysis of plasma-sprayed ceramic thermal barrier coatings

The present review describes current research on the numerical modelling of ceramic thermal sprayed coatings; both their manufacture and their performance during thermal cycling. Micromechanical approaches are described and discussed for the coating deposition process, and for the constitutive description of the material produced. A decision support system based on the numerical models is shown to be an effective way of collecting the knowledge produced and feeding back the results to industrial users. Finite element models are used to simulate the thermal and mechanical response to thermal cycling of coated components. Experimental test data is used to develop and validate the models. We consider two industrial applications; coated pistons (from automotive engineering), and coated turbine blades (from aerospace engineering.).