Influence of Bond Coat Roughness on Life Time of APS Thermal Barrier Coating Systems under Thermo-Mechanical Load

The influence of the bond coat roughness on the life time of air plasma-sprayed (APS) thermal barrier coating systems (TBCs) was investigated under thermo-mechanical (TMF) load. The TBC system was applied on hollow cylindrical specimens made of the single crystal super alloy CMSX-4 in the orientation with a MCrAlY-bond coat. Two different values of the bond coat roughness were investigated. In order to study the influence of the thicknesses of the thermally grown oxide layer (TGO), the specimens were isothermally oxidized at 1000 °C for a long term prior to the TMF experiments. The thermo-mechanical experiments show a higher number of cycles-to-failure for TBCs corresponding to an increase of the bond coat roughness. Furthermore, it could be demonstrated that a certain TGO thickness is needed to produce a total delamination of the top coat in the TMF experiments. This minimum thickness varies with the surface roughness of the bond coat and the TMF cycle's phase shift and strain range. Crack initiation and crack propagation were investigated by microscopical analyses, for example, SEM and EDX. Therefore most of the experiments were completed before a total delamination of the top coat occurred. On the basis of these investigations, crack initiation and crack propagation under thermo-mechanical load were described systematically.