Software Tools for Lifetime Assessment of Thermal Barrier Coatings Part I — Thermal Ageing Failure and Thermal Fatigue Failure

Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) increase the service lifetime of specific components in, for example, gas turbines or airplane engines and allow higher operating temperatures to increase efficiency. Lifetime prediction models are therefore of both academic and applied interest; either to test new coatings or to determine operational conditions that can ensure a certain lifetime, for example 25,000 hr for gas turbines. Driven by these demands, the equations used in lifetime prediction have become more and more sophisticated and consequently are complicated to apply. A collection of software tools for lifetime assessment was therefore developed to provide an easy to use graphical user interface whilst incorporating the recent improvements in modeling equations. The Windows based software is compatible with other Windows applications, such as, Power Point, Excel, or Origin. Laboratory lifetime data from isothermal, thermal cyclic and/or burner rig testing can be loaded into the software for analysis and the program provides confidence limits and an accuracy assessment of the analysis model. The main purpose of the software tool is to predict TBC spallation for a given bond coat temperature, temperature gradient across the coating, and thermal cycle frequency.