Powder Processing and Thermal Spraying of Barium-Magnesium-Aluminium-Silicate Environmental Barrier Coatings

Abstract

As a potential candidate for the top coating in novel Environmental Barrier Coating systems, one representative of a Barium-Magnesium-Aluminium-Silicate family was produced in the form of the powder. Initial compounds were heat-treated to synthesize and the product was crushed in the ball mill device down to the fraction of 20 micrometers. In the next step, the atmospheric plasma spray (APS) technique was used to form a coating on a steel sheet substrate. The aim of this study was to obtain the most favorable technological parameters for the thermal spraying process and therefore two plasma spraying parameters for pure alumina or yttria stabilized zirconia, and other three experimentally designed ones were tested. Despite the same stand-off distance used for coatings manufacturing, thickness and porosity differed in order of tens of micrometers and several percent, respectively. Resulting coatings consisted of a mixture of amorphous and crystalline Al2O3, SiO2 and MgO phases.