Thermal Barrier Coatings for Long Life in Marine Gas Turbine Engines

Due to high power density and durability, gas turbines provide significant benefits in terms of efficiency and performance that in recent years, marine gas turbines have been deployed in commercial and cruise ships. Marine gas turbine technologies are essentially extensions of aero-gas turbine technology. Aero, land and marine engines have been used successfully for decades, recently there have been major technological gains particularly in aero and land based gas turbine engines to enhance their performance, efficiency and durability via extended usage of superalloys and coatings with high aluminum containing MCrAlY based alloys or Pt based pack aluminides for oxidation protection to superalloys. Increasing needs for greater power for future weapon systems and weight level requirement demand for greater power output of marine existing gas turbine engines achieved through increased inlet temperatures which can result in accelerated degradation/oxidation on the metallic components. Reliacoat proposes a durable multifunctional layered thermal barrier coating that will allow increase in operational temperature, while providing durable protection to the superalloy. The team also proposes multi-stage Integrated Computational Materials Engineering framework of multi-layer elastic energy formulation, microstructure optimization, and coating life prediction.