Improvements in Gas Turbine Performance via Novel Plasma Spray Coatings offering Protection against Ingested Species

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This project will involve extensive collaboration between three teams of researchers, two in the UK and one in India. The expertise and facilities of the three teams are highly complementary and together constitute a uniquely appropriate set of resources to tackle the challenges of the proposed programme. In addition, three industrial partners, all with highly relevant technical background and interests, will be actively engaged in the research. There will be extensive exchanges of samples and personnel between the partners, designed to disseminate technical expertise and facilitate the experimental programme. The work will concern an important area of manufacturing development, namely improvement of the performance of protective ceramic coatings in gas turbine engines (for both propulsion and power generation). In particular, the proposed research will lead to improved understanding of the mechanisms by which ingested species (such as sand, ash, salt etc) can cause degradation and debonding of these coatings, and also to evaluation of some promising counter-measures (which have not previously been investigated for this purpose). The coatings will be produced by plasma spraying, an advanced manufacturing technique used by several of the partners, with novel variants of the process also being available within the partnership. Experimental work will also encompass the use of a small jet engine to investigate the adhesion of ingested particulate on substrates within the turbine, complemented by extensive modelling studies.