Efficiency increase by surface modification of gas turbine blade

Firstly, an alternative stabilizer has been chosen for the zirconium oxide system in the form of yttria (Yttrium oxide, also known as yttria, is Y2O3. It is an air-stable, white solid substance. Yttrium oxide is used as a common starting material for both materials science as well as inorganic compounds). Secondly, variations in thickness of coating. The focus of the work has therefore been to characterize their lifetime and thermal properties when produced in a complete TBC system.

In earlier work yttria stabilized zirconia was used only for a particular thickness value. In this work different values of thickness are used for topcoat and characterization of this coated material is determined. While small at room temperature and in the as produced state; the influence becomes more pronounced at high temperatures and with longer thermal exposure time. The thermal barrier coated specimen of varying thickness was tested at both steady and transient conditions. There were many parameters being evaluated like hardness, surface roughness, microstructure and temperature gradient and stress distributions in the specimen. The temperature gradient was determined both under steady state and transient conditions experimentally as well as computationally using ANSYS V17.