Thermal Barrier Coatings for Long Life in Marine Gas Turbine Engines

The marine environment is extremely corrosive to turbine engine components due to the large amount of salts from the sea coupled with the fuel impurities and the high temperatures experienced. To cope with future operational requirements, a strong need exists to develop novel, protective coatings to provide environmental protection from hot corrosion and oxidation conditions across a wide range of operating temperatures. To address this issue, a strong need exists to develop novel, protective coatings to provide environmental protection from Type I and II hot corrosion and oxidation conditions, as well as, thermal protection to the component. Thus, thermal barrier coatings (TBC) systems consisting of a dense, environmentally resistant bond coat and a strain tolerant columnar top coat with low thermal conductivity are of high interest for use in these engines. This program will employ corrosion resistant bond coat compositions and advanced processing methods to apply marine resistant thermal barrier coating systems onto coupons for testing in relevant environments. Down-selected coatings will be demonstrated on turbine engine components such as blades and vanes. Design of these systems will be aided by the development of an integrated computational material engineering (ICME) model to promote long TBC life.