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Erosion of aero-engine components has been identified as a serious problem since the World War II. During this time various attempts have been made to study this phenomenon in order to improve the life and performance of the used components. Flights in particulate environments led to the drastic degradation of the performance due to blunting of blade edges, reduction of chord and increase of tip clearance. Measures like coating of blades and high efficiency filters have been introduced in order to protect the aero-engine components from wear in dusty environments.
In the present work an effort has been made in order to deposit various single and multilayer coatings for the erosion protection of Inconel718 alloy used as the substrate material. Inconel718 finds its applications in high pressure compressors within gas turbines. To deposit the various coatings onto the substrate material the Direct Current (DC) Method has been used as a Physical Vaporization Deposition technique. The architecture of the investigated coatings is on one side a single layer TiN coating and on the other side multilayer Cr/CrN, Ti/CrN and TiN/CrN coatings as well.
The experimental results show that bilayer Cr/CrN multilayer coatings possess a variation in mechanical properties with the change in bilayer period. Additional adhesion tests show various spallation mechanisms which are related to the coating architecture. Process parameters used during the coating process had an influence on the coating growth. The growth of coatings as in form of a V-structure results in low adhesion between the coating and the substrate or the previous coating layer. Another change in the coating structure is obtained by changing metallic or ceramic layer between CrN layers. The presence of coating defects, like droplets, on the coating surface acts as voids within the coating structure decreasing the structural integrity of the coatings.
The conduction of a phase analysis of Cr/CrN multilayer developed the presence of a mixture of fcc-CrN, hcp-Cr2N and bcc-Cr phases. A variation in the phase formation is found to be dependent on the bilayer period of the coatings. A complex XPS analysis and a related thermodynamic study indicate that the variation in the binding energies and thermodynamic stability of the CrN and Cr2N phases are responsible for their stable formation during the coating deposition. TiN single layer coatings showed the formation of a single phase fcc-TiN. The presence of Cr2N, Cr2Ti, TixNy phases is found during the deposition of Ti/CrN and TiN/CrN coatings. An additional Scherrer analysis to evaluate the determination of crystal size pointed out the presence of nano-crystals of various phases within the coatings. Stress analysis of the tested Cr/CrN coatings showed compressive stresses within the coatings, respectively. In this case only slight differences in stress values are observed for Cr1/CrN3 and Cr0.25/CrN3.75 coatings.
Erosion tests of Cr/CrN coatings showed erosion protection at shallow incidence angles (30°) as compared to uncoated Inconel718 alloy. In contrast, no erosion protection is obtained during the erosion at oblique angles. Crack deflection at the metal-ceramic interface, shearing of columns, internal distortion of CrN layer, radial and cone cracking, step shear, inter- and intra-columnar crack propagation are reported as some of the processes occurring during the erosion process. The presence of micro droplets is reported to be one of the major causes of low adhesion between the coating and substrate or structural weakness of coating, which provokes a rapid removal of the coating.
Within the last section of the present thesis the correlation between various models (proposed through contact mechanics) and erosion rate is studied. It is found that for the single layer and multilayer coatings a low correlation between H3/E2 and erosion rate exists. A study of the ratio between elastic modulus of coating to elastic modulus of substrate (Ef/Es) in order to describe the erosion mechanism in a coating show non-conformance of the results as proposed by contact mechanic theories. A difference in the elastic modulus of consecutive coating layers (E1-E2) showed that no correlation can be found for the coatings during erosion at 30° and 90°.