Thermal Barrier Coating for Gas Turbine Engine

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of California, San Diego MAE 221A

Edwin Adelpour

Abstract This paper reviews the basic concept of how a gas turbine engine works and elaborates on how thermal barrier coating is used to protect the turbine blades from high temperature gas. Furthermore, discussion of how TBC is deposited onto the blade and how different depositing methods produced different results is done. In addition, proposals will be made of new ways of improving TBC structures and new ideas of cooling the blade from these extreme temperatures.

Introduction The advances and improvements of current gas turbine technology have led to more efficient and more powerful engines. One very large improvement over the past fifty years has been the increase in maximum gas temperature that is produced in the gas turbine engine. Currently, temperatures in military aircraft turbines can reach upwards of 1600 degrees Celsius and for commercial aircraft temperatures can reach upwards of 1500 degrees Celsius6. These increases in temperature has in turn increased efficiency, but has also introduced other problems such as the actual constraints in the materials itself. The super alloy that is used to create the turbines in a gas turbine engine has a melting point of around 1300 degree Celsius which as we can see is well below the operating temperature of the engine. To overcome these constraints three major advancements have been developed: creating alloys that are more creep resistant and oxidation resistant, including channels in the blades so that air can flow through them, and the focus of this paper which is the development of a thermal barrier coat (TBC) that is applied to the turbine blade itself7.

Importance In industry, the main focus of a developer is to create a more efficient and reliable product. In this case the only way to increase efficiency is to increase temperature which makes thermal management very important. Without some type of cooling technique aircraft would be very limited in how fast they could go based on the melting point of the alloy used in the turbine blade. The costs of flying would also increase because the efficiency of these aircrafts would have to remain low. In addition, the speed of these aircrafts would be greatly reduced due to the
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fact that the amount of work produced form these engines would be less. Overall some type of thermal management must be implemented if the aircraft industry intends to stay competitive in prices and reliability.

Background A gas turbine engine consists of four parts: the compressor, fuel injectors, combustion chamber and the turbines. As one can see in Figure 1, air is brought in through the intake into the compressor. In the compressor the air is compressed to about thirty times its original pressure. This high pressure air is then forced into the combustor chamber where it is mixed will fuel (jet fuel). This high pressure fuel and air mixture is then ignited which expanses

Figure 1: Turbine Engine 5 <http://travel.howstuffworks.com/turbine3.htm> <http://travel.howstuffworks.com/turbine3.htm>

many time its original volume. The resultant expansion turns the reactants into a high energy; high temperature (1600+ degree Celsius) steam. The steam created in this combustion chamber is directly connected to efficiency of the jet engine. When temperature in the combustor increases, so does the overall efficiency of the turbine. This steam processed into the turbine where it is converted into work.3, 4
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Current technology In an effort to protect the turbine blades from these extremely high temperature gases; the thermal barrier coating (TBC) system has been implemented. The TBC system primarily consists of four layers: the ceramic top-coat, the thermally grown oxide (TGO), the bond coat, and the substrate2. This can be seen in figure 2. The ceramic top-coat is the layer that provides thermal insulation for the blade. It has a very low thermal conductivity and has been designed using point defects to withstand thermal cycles. This layer is typically made of Y2O3 which is stabilized with Zr02,or YSZ for short. The thermal conductivity for this layer at a temperature of a thousand degrees Celsius is 2.3 W/ (M*K) which is one of lowest conductivity of all the ceramics. In addition YSZ has a very high melting point (2700 degree Celsius) which makes it perfect for this application. Furthermore in an effort to reduce stresses in this material, cracks and porosity are intentionally incorporated into the material to make it highly compliant (elastic modulus of 50 GPa) and strain tolerant.2 The next two layers are the bond coat and the thermally grown oxide (TGO). The TGO layer was not intended but was created when the ceramic top-coat reacts with the bond coat in very high temperatures. This layer is about one to ten micro meters thick and is engineered to form as -Al2O3 and that its growth is slow, uniform, and defect free.2 The Bond Coat falls above the supper alloy and is about 754 Figure 2: Thermal Barrier Coating System7

150 micrometers thick. It is an oxidation-resistant metallic layer and is primary used to hold the ceramic top coat to the substrate. This layer is typically made of Ni and Pt and in some cases can consist of more than one layer having different composition. The final layer, which is the substrate is usually a nickel or cobalt based supper alloy which is air cooled by hollow channels inside the turbine blade. This supper alloy may also contain additional elements to improve specific properties such as high temperature strength, ductility, oxidation resistance, hot corrosion resistance and castability. 2

Depositing methods The bond coat is primarily deposited by electroplating in conjunction with diffusion-aluminizing or chemical-vapor deposition.2 The Ceramic top-coat on other hand is currently being deposited in two different ways: Airplasma-sprayed (APS) deposition and Electron-beam physical-vapor deposition (EB-PVD) 2. A picture of the different microstructures created by each method is shown in Figure 3. In an APS top coat, the orientation of the cracks and pores are normal to the flow of heat, which reduces
Figure 3: a) APS, laminar structure b) EB-PVD columnar structure
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the thermal conductivity from 2.3 W/(m*K) to about 0.8-1.7 W/(m*K). However, because of the orientation of the micro structure and the roughness of the interface, this method generally produces a shorter thermal cycle compared to EBPVD 2. This can be seen in Figure 4. Contrary to APS structure, the EB-PVD structure is columnar which prevents the build up of tensile stresses and increases the life span of this material as noted earlier. The porosity and the cracks within this structure also help reduce the thermal conductivity to about 1.5-2 W/(m*K) which as we can see is higher than APS. Overall because of EB-PVD life span this deposition method is used to coat turbine blades in a jet engine.

Figure 4: life span of different deposition methods

Mathematical background Because of the complexity of this model, the majority of the results are done through experimentation. In order to get a physical feel for what is happening, we have made several assumptions in our analysis: 1) Tgas = T1 = 1873 degrees Kelvin which is kept constant. 2) T4 = Tair = 298 degrees Kelvin which is kept constant.

3) Assume that a small portion of the air foil that I represent as a rectangle is a good model of the entire air foil. 4) Properties of state stay constant throughout the model because boundary conditions stay constant. 5) No heat flux through the top and bottom of our model (insulated). 6) TGO layer has no effect on temperature distribution
This information combined with table 1 was inputted into COMSOL and solved. The results are shown in figure 6.

Ni Substrate Density (kg/m3) Thermal conductive(W/M*K) Specific heat (J/kg K) 8880 73.9 460
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NiCoCrAlY 7320 10.2 781

YSR 6037 2.1 656

Table 1: Material properties for a turbine blade .

Figure 5: 2-D Diagram of the blade.

Figure 6: Comsol model of the temperature distribution in a turbine blade.

As one can see in Figure 6, the temperature distribution drops dramatically through the ceramic top coat because of its very low thermal conductivity. Furthermore, these results show that the temperature distribution through the supper alloy is well below the melting point of the metal which is what was expected.

Proposed researched The only way to improve efficiency in a gas turbine engine is to increase the temperatures within the system. Because of this more research needs to be done in improving reliably and thermal conductively of the thermal barrier coat. Focus needs to be placed on the current faults of TBC system and how they can be resolved. Some problems are with oxidation
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of the material, and lack of modeling to predict the life span of the thermal barrier coating.

In

addition, new research in different ways of cooling the blade needs to be done. A reasonable area to focus on would be water cooling and nitrogen cooling. One thing is apparent; new and improved cooling techniques need to be developed to produce more powerful, efficient and reliable aircrafts.

Work Cited
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Lefebvre Henry, Arthur. "Gas Turbine Combustion" <http://books.google.com/bookshl=en&lr=&id=JJKQ9tj6q8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR&dq=turb ine+cooling+in+a+gas+jet+engine&ots=Jthq9Ul9yk&sig=ym8nJUWWy1GPzFg1kP_aR cw8K8I#PPT1,M1>. Nitin P. Padture, Maurice Gell, Eric H. Jordan. "Thermal Barrier Coatings for Gas-Turbine Engine Applications." Science 12 April 2002: Vol. 296. no. 5566, pp. 280 - 284 ODonoghue Lisa. "Why dont Gas Turbines Blades burn?" <http://www.ul.ie/elements/Issue6/Gas%20Turbine%20Blades.htm> n/a. "How does a modern gas turbine engine work?" December 4, 2007. < http://www.mtu.de/en/take-off/how_engines_work/index.html>

Marshall, Brian. "How Gas Turbine Engines Work." <http://science.howstuffworks.com/turbine.htm> W.G. Marijnissen and A. van Lieshout. "The evolution of thermal barrier coatings status and upcoming solutions for today's key issues." Surface and Coatings Technology. Vol 120121, November 1999, pp 61-67 Dr. Clarke and C.G. Levi. Materials Design for the Next Generation Thermal Barrier Coatings. Annual Review of Materials research. Vol 33:383-417. August 2003 K.A. Khor , Y.W. Gu. Effects of residual stress on the performance of plasma sprayed functionally graded Zr02/NiCOCrAlY coatings. Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 6476

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