- The operation temperatures of gas turbine engines have been increased significantly to optimize their efficiency factor. To protect the metallic blades from these high temperatures, thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are applied onto the turbine blades. These layers must have a good adhesion to the supporting turbine blade. A poor adhesion may lead to a delamination of the layer during operation and finally to a destruction of the turbine blade and eventually the complete turbine. It is therefore necessary, to check the quality of the layer adhesion regularly during service or preferably during operation. Approaches for non-contact and nondestructive techniques by using optical or infrared radiation are not sophisticated up to now. Hence in this paper a new attempt to improve these optical or infrared-optical methods is described. The presented idea relies on the application of different wavelengths for the used measurement system. Using a short wavelength range, where the TBC is semitransparent, allows the measurement of the temperature of the turbine blade. Using a second, long wavelength range where the TBC is non-transparent, the temperature of the surface of the TBC can be determined. As the thermal contact is usually correlated with the mechanical adhesion such measurements can be a possible tool for nondestructively testing the adhesion of TBCs.
