Surface engineering of advanced composite coatings for significant enhancement to the life cycle of HydroPower infrastructure

与任何其他电厂一样，在水电站中，部件故障通常会导致高昂的维护和维修成本；因停机和更换电力而损失的收入；运营效率降低；以及设备使用寿命的缩短。有几种方法可以最大限度地减少液压系统中磨料流的影响，即：i.改进的流型设计，ii.对裸露材料进行表面处理，以增加耐腐蚀性，以及防腐涂料的应用。在NSERC-Strategic项目中，我们建议i)在SS444/SS309基板上制造两代自润滑复合涂层，ii)量化它们的腐蚀性能，iii)研究它们的摩擦学特性，iv)开发预测腐蚀模型，以帮助魁北克水电公司(HQ)进行技术开发。 我们的材料开发将专注于热喷涂的使用，这是最常用的涂层技术之一，应用于不同的工业部门，如航空航天、汽车、生物医学、能源和环境。这项技术用途广泛，因为可以喷涂金属、陶瓷、聚合物及其复合材料，以生产高性能涂层/薄膜。热喷涂层目前被广泛用于延长工业部件的使用寿命或修复复杂和昂贵系统的故障部件，这些都是我们的工业合作伙伴直接瞄准的目标。将开发一系列工程涂层，以应对恶劣的使用条件，以及多种退化机制，如水轮机发动机所面临的综合冲刷/腐蚀。我们共同努力的一个关键优势是通过电化学和摩擦学测试以及随后的数值建模对材料进行系统的表征，从而为后续材料的设计定义预测指标。

In hydropower plants like any other plants, part failures normally contribute to high maintenance and repair costs; revenue lost due to downtime and cost of replacement power; decreased operating efficiencies; and reduction of equipment service life. There are several avenues to minimize the effect of abrasive flows in hydraulic systems, namely i. improved flow profile design, ii. surface treatment of exposed materials to increase erosion resistance, and iii. application of erosion-resistant coatings. In this NSERC-Strategic project we propose to i) manufacture two generations of self-lubricating composite coatings on SS444/SS309 substrate, ii) quantify their corrosion properties, iii) study their tribology properties, and iv) develop predictive corrosion models that will aid Hydro Quebec (HQ) in their technology development. Our material development will focus on the use of thermal spray, which is one of the most used coating technologies with applications in different industrial sectors such as aerospace, automotive, biomedical, energy and environment. The technology is versatile as metals, ceramics, polymers and their composites can be sprayed to produce high-performance coatings/films. Thermal spray coatings are presently widely used to either improve service life of industrial parts or repair the failed parts of complex and expensive systems, which are directly targeted by our industrial partner. A spectrum of engineered coatings will be developed to address severe service conditions with multiple degradation mechanisms such as combined erosion/corrosion as faced in hydro turbine engines. A key strength of our concerted effort is the systematic characterization of the materials through electrochemical and tribology testing and subsequent numerical modeling that can define predictive metrics for the subsequent design of later materials generations.