Directed Vapor Technologies International, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: Advanced thermal barrier coating (TBC) systems are desired for naval gas turbine engines.

Description

Advanced thermal barrier coating (TBC) systems are desired for naval gas turbine engines. These coatings will increase the durability of hot-section engine components to significantly improve the time"on-wing", safety and readiness of these engines. Currently, TBC top coats are applied onto gas turbine engine components primarily using an electron beam physical vapor deposition (EB-PVD) process. This approach is an effective means for applying high quality TBC coatings, however, a key drawback of the process it that it can only effectively coat surfaces that are in the line-of-sight of the component surface. The advent of advanced engine designs containing complex components with many hidden and partially hidden surfaces have resulted in a growing need for TBC deposition techniques which can effectively deposit high quality coatings onto the non line-of-sight regions of these components. The objective of this work is to transition into industry the use of a novel physical vapor deposition coating technique that increases the growth rate of TBC coatings in non light-of-sight (NLOS) regions over that found in the EB-PVD technique and also results in the required coating microstructure.