Development of Endurable Thermal Barrier Coatings for Diesel Engine Specific Heat Reduction

The future generation of both military and commercial diesel engines will operate at significantly higher temperatures and pressures than today's engines. The future combat system diesel engine operating parameters demand significant design improvement of in cylinder insulation. Increased cylinder pressure and reduced cooling requirements, heat energy recovery in the exhaust gas by turbo charging and turbo-compounding will likely be incorporated. Thus higher engine fuel efficiency, performance, and reliability can be achieved. As temperature and pressure loads for base materials in diesel engines are pushed to the maximum limit, further improvements in engine life time can only be expected by applying ceramic coatings. Use of Thermal Barrier Coatings (TBCs) show numerous advantages such as higher allowable combustion temperature and reduced heat losses to the cooling fluids (water and oil). This proposed effort will concentrate on determining the limitations of today's TBC technology. Furthermore, we expect to further the development of a diesel engine TBCs through extensive optimization, requiring a systematic optimization procedure. This procedure entails all facets of design integration, on-line process control through monitoring of an either known or newly developed TBC processes. The focus will be aimed at generating an optimized reliable reproducible, quality controlled product. Adiabatics, Inc. having the personnel, expertise and facilities to undertake such a program looks forward to this challenge.