Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64 – 76

www.elsevier.com/locate/msea

Effects of residual stress on the performance of plasma sprayed

functionally graded ZrO2/NiCoCrAlY coatings
K.A. Khor *, Y.W. Gu
Materials Laboratory, School of Mechanical and Production Engineering, Nanyang Technological Uni6ersity, Nanyang A6enue,
Singapore 639798, Singapore

Received 16 February 1999; received in revised form 5 August 1999

Abstract

Functionally graded ZrO2/NiCoCrAlY coatings were produced by plasma spraying using pre-mixed and spheroidized powders
as the feedstock. The microstructure, density, elastic modulus, thermal conductivity/diffusivity, microhardness and coefficient of
thermal expansion were found to change gradually through the five-layer functionally graded coatings which was beneficial for the
improvement of mechanical and thermal properties of the coatings. The residual stresses of the as-sprayed coatings with different
graded layers and different thicknesses, as well as the changes of residual stresses during thermal cycling were simulated by finite
element analysis (FEA). Results showed that residual stress was the lowest for the five-layer functionally graded coating compared
to that of the duplex coating and three-layer coating with the same thickness, and the residual stresses increased with a decrease
in coating thickness. For the coatings with the same thickness, the bond strength and thermal cycling resistance were found to
increase with an increase in the number of graded layers which is due to the decrease in the residual thermal stresses. The bond
strength of the five-layer functionally graded coating was about twice as high as that of the duplex coating and the number of
thermal cycles of functionally graded coating was five times higher than that of the duplex coating. Results also showed that the
bond strength decreased with an increase in the coating thickness. © 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Functionally graded material (FGM); Plasma spray; Residual stress; Bond strength; Thermal cycling; ZrO2; Thermal barrier coating

1. Introduction residual stresses significantly influences various types of

The development of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs)
has led to highly efficient thermal barrier systems for
gas turbines and diesel engines. Plasma spraying is an
attractive and simple method of forming TBCs. How-
ever, conventional TBCs and direct ceramic/metal join-
ing usually suffer premature failure because of
spallation during cooling due to excessive residual
stresses generated near the interface and poor bond
strength between the coating and the substrate. Crack-
ing and spallation usually occur at the substrate/coating
interface or metal bond coat/ceramic top coat interface
[1,2]. The residual stresses have a substantial effect on
the coating properties [3]. They can give rise to defor-
mation of coated workpieces and spallation (or crack-
ing) of the coating. In addition, the nature of the
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +65-7995526; fax: +65-7911859.
E-mail address: mkakhor@ntu.edu.sg (K.A. Khor)
coating properties, such as bond strength [4], thermal
cycling [5,6] and erosion resistance [7], etc. In order to
improve the long-term performance of TBCs, it is im-
portant and necessary to simulate the residual stresses
and understand the coating failure mechanisms.
In an effort to release the residual stress and improve
the properties of plasma sprayed coatings, functionally
graded material (FGM) with a graded composition
from the top coat to the bond coat were designed in
order to reduce thermal expansion mismatch among the
different coating layers and substrate [8,9]. However,
up to now, there are few investigations on the effective-
ness of FGM coatings in the reduction of thermal
stresses and improvement of the properties, and as we
know, the poor bond strength between the coating and
substrate of plasma sprayed TBCs is always a problem
when these coatings are subjected to mechanical and
thermal stresses.

0921-5093/00/$ - see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 5 0 9 3 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 5 6 5 - 1
 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76
Table 1
Plasma spraying parameters
Primary gas (pressure); flowrate Argon (50 psi); 82 scfh
Auxiliary gas (pressure); flowrate Helium (50 psi); 26 scfh
Powder feed rate 30 g/min
Arc current 800 A
Arc voltage 50 V
Spray distance 120 mm
In this paper, ZrO2/NiCoCrAlY functionally graded
coatings were prepared by plasma spraying using pre-
alloyed and plasma spheroidized composite powders.
The microstructure, microhardness, density, elastic
modulus, thermal conductivity/diffusivity and coeffi-
cient of thermal expansion were studied. Coatings with
different thicknesses and coating layers were also pre-
pared for bond strength and thermal cycling resistance
tests. Numerical simulation on residual stresses existed
in these as-sprayed coatings and the stresses generated
during thermal cycling were simulated using the AN-
SYS 53 finite element analysis code [10]. The results
were used to correlate with the bond strength and
thermal cycling resistance of the different types of
coatings.
2. Experimental procedures
The 8 wt.% Y2O3 stabilized ZrO2 and NiCoCrAlY
powders (Praxair, USA) were used for preparing the
FGM coatings. The mixture of these two types of
powders with different ratios of NiCoCrAlY (25, 50
and 75% by weight) was ball milled and subsequently
spheroidized by plasma spraying into distilled water
using a 40-kW plasma torch (SG-100, Miller Thermal,
USA). Table 1 shows the parameters used in the plasma
spraying process.
An optical microscope (Leica DMR, Switzerland)
was used to study the microstructure of coatings. The
microhardness (Vickers) profiles of duplex and FGM
coatings were measured on cross-section specimens us-
ing a Matsuzawa DMH-1 microhardness tester (Japan),
with a load of 300 g and duration time of 15 s. Elastic
modulus of five individual layers of FGM coatings
Table 2
Coating layers and thicknesses of duplex and FGM coatings
Number 100% N 25% N+75% Za
(mm) (mm)
1 (two-layer) 200 – –
2 (three-layer) 200 – 200
3 (five-layer) 100 100
4 (five-layer) 200 200
a
N, NiCoCrAlY; Z, ZrO2.
65
under room temperature and high temperatures was
measured using a four-point bending test with a high
temperature 8502 Instron machine. The single-layer
peel-off coatings with a dimension of 45× 8×0.8 mm3
were tested under 25, 400, 800 and 1200°C, respectively.
The CTE of freestanding five individual layers was
measured at a heating rate of 10°C/min as a function of
temperature from 25 to 1000°C using a Perkin Elmer
TMA 7 thermomechanical analyzer.
Nickel stubs were used as the substrates for bond
strength tests and the peel-off 5-mm thick duplex and
five-layer FGM coatings were used in the thermal cy-
cling test. Prior to plasma spraying, the substrate sur-
faces were grit blasted using silicon carbide grits
followed by ultrasonic cleaning. The composition and
thickness of different layers of duplex coatings and
FGM coatings used in bond strength tests are shown in
Table 2. The ASTM standard C633-79, i.e. the bond
strength testing method for the plasma sprayed coat-
ings, was used to measure the bond strength of coat-
ings. Two identical cylindrical nickel stubs were used as
a set, one with the coating on the surface and the other
without. A high performance DP-460 Epoxy Adhesive
(USA) with a maximum bond strength of 40 MPa was
used to join the two stubs. The surface of the uncoated
stub was sand blasted to enhance the adhesion strength.
The two stubs were aligned and a weight of  420 g
was applied to ensure an intimate contact between the
two surfaces. After 12 h of curing at room temperature,
the bond strength (the maximum stress at which two
stubs are separated) was measured using an Instron
4302 tester at a cross-head speed of 1 mm min − 1. The
results were the average of five samples. A high temper-
ature Netzsch DIL 402 C dilatometer (Germany) which
offers a maximum temperature of 2400°C with a sensi-
tivity of 1 digit/1.25 nm was used to measure the
thermal cycling resistance of both the duplex and FGM
coatings. The 5-mm thick peel-off (duplex and FGM)
coatings were heated and cooled in a vacuum oven
cyclically between room temperature and 1300°C with
an equal heating and cooling rate of 50 K/min. The
sharp drop or increase in shrinkage or dilatation was
considered as the thermal cycling failure of the coating.
50% N+50% Z 75% N+25% Z 100% Z Overall thickness
(mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
– 400 600
– 200 600
100 100 200 600
200 200 200 1000
66 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76
3. FEA considerations
The residual stress distribution of duplex and FGM
coatings was analyzed by the finite element method
(FEM, ANSYS 5.3). The calculations were performed
on a UNIX workstation. The thermal-structural ele-
ment PLANE 13 was selected.
For the modeling of residual stress after plasma
spraying, the model used (shown in Fig. 1) represents a
cylinder shape nickel substrate of 50 mm in diameter
and 10 mm thick with a coating deposited to the top
surface. The coating and substrate are assumed to be
isotropic for simplicity in this study. The analytical
model is a perfect elastic body without plastic deforma-
tion. An axial symmetric problem is chosen to reduce
computer costs and data manipulation time. Three
types of NiCoCrAlY/ZrO2 coatings (two-layer, three-
layer and five-layer) with the thicknesses of 600 mm and
1 mm are computed. A fine mesh is introduced to
model both the coating and the substrate. The elements
and nodes of the different types of coating systems are
shown in Table 3.
Sand blasting treatment usually introduces compres-
sive stresses on the substrate that are subsequently
reduced owing to the temperature rise during spraying
[11]. The high stresses presented in the deposition of
powders exist for a very short time when the molten
particles impinge on the substrate or on a previously
deposited coated surface and the greater part of this
stress is relieved by plastic flow at a much reduced yield
stress [12]. For this reason, the quenching stress is
relatively small, and, the entire specimen is assumed to
be stress free at the temperature of 427°C (at which the
spraying process is assumed to end) [13]. Thus, the
residual stresses of as-sprayed coatings are considered
to be caused by cooling from a uniform steady-state
temperature of 427°C to room temperature (25°C).
Fig. 1. Schematic description of the geometry used in the finite element model.
Table 3
Elements and nodes for different kinds of coating systems
Two-layer, 600 mm Five-layer, 600 mm
Element 1300 1500
Node 1377 1581
In the thermal cycling experiments, 5-mm thick peel-
off coatings with the length and width of 10 mm were
used. The analysis method simplifies to a two-dimen-
sional axisymmetric model when the symmetry of the
configuration is considered. Both the models for FGM
coatings (1-mm thick for each of five layers) and duplex
coatings (2 mm for bond coat and 3 mm for ceramic
top coat) consist of 625 four-node isoparametric solid
elements and 676 nodes. The coating and the substrate
are assumed to be isotropic and elastic for simplicity.
The heat transfer boundary conditions used for the
analysis are shown in Fig. 2. Compared with the upper
surface cooling, the lower surface and edge surface heat
transfer cooling are ignored, because only the upper
surface (ceramic surface) is cooled with a cooling fan,
and subjected to a convective heat transfer with a heat
transfer coefficient of 1000 W/m2K [13]. The modeling
consists of two steps. First, a thermal model is used to
determine the temperature through the specimen during
cooling. Second, the resulting thermal histories are
transferred to a mechanical model to compute the
thermal stresses both in the coating and in the sub-
strate. Thermal radiation is not considered in the calcu-
lation. The in-plane thermal stresses are calculated
through constructing a continuous model. The steps of
thermal loading conditions are shown as follows:
1. Calculation of residual stresses owing to a uniform
cooling from an assumed uniform stress-free manu-
facturing temperature of 427°C to room
temperature;
2. A steady state analysis is performed to calculate the
thermal residual stresses as the specimen is heated to
1300°C;
3. A cooling fan is applied on the surface of the
coating via a heat transfer coefficient of 1000 W/
m2K which results in a different transient tempera-
ture distribution during cooling. From this, the
Two-layer, 1000 mm Three-layer, 1000 mm Five-layer, 1000 mm
1300 1500 1500
1377 1581 1581
 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76 67

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of boundary condition for thermal cycling.

transient thermal stresses owing to surface cooling

of the coating are obtained.
Elastic modulus, density, coefficient of thermal ex-
pansion, thermal conductivity and specific heat for
different coating layers at different temperatures were
experimentally measured for the computation [14]. The
thermal diffusivity/conductivity of different layers was
obtained by laser flash method. The results of these
properties are shown in Table 4. Poisson’s ratios of
pure Ni based alloy and ZrO2, together with the prop-
erty of Ni substrate were obtained from Ref. [15]. The
Poisson’s ratios of interlayers, composed of the ceramic
top coat and metal bond coat without considering
porosity, can be assumed from the following equation
[2],

n0 = nmVm + nc (1−Vm ) (1)

in which n0, nc and nm are the Poisson’s ratio of

interlayer, ceramic coating and metal coating, respec-
tively. Vm is the volumetric ratio of metal. The effect of
Fig. 3. CTE of individual layers of FGM coating.
the change of Poisson’s ratio on the residual stress is
little, so Poisson’s ratio can be expressed as a linear
function of the position. The effects of porosity will not
be considered in this finite element analysis.

4. Results and discussions

4.1. Characterization of FGM coatings

Fig. 3 shows the coefficient of thermal expansion

(CTE) of individual layers of NiCoCrAlY/ZrO2 FGM
coating as a function of temperature from 25 to
1000°C. As can be observed from Fig. 3, CTE increases
with an increase in temperature and changes gradually
through the five individual layers of FGM coating.
There is a significant difference in the CTE value
between ZrO2 layer and NiCoCrAlY layer and the
difference increases significantly with an increase in Fig. 4. Elastic modulus of individual layers of FGM coating.
 68

Table 4
Material properties of five individual layers [14]

Temperature Elastic modulus Density Coefficient of thermal expansion Poisson’s ratio Thermal conductivity Specific heat
(°C) (Pa) (kg/m3) (W/mK) (J/kg °C)

Ni substrate 25 207×109 8880 1.27×10−5a 0.312b 90.5 461

400 182×109 8880 1.64×10−5a 0.312 65.3 460
800 150×109 8880 – 0.312 73.9 460
NiCoCrAlY 25 225×109 7320 1.4×10−5 0.3 4.3 501
400 186×109 7320 2.4×10−5 0.3 6.4 592
800 147×109 7320 4.7×10−5 0.3 10.2 781
1200 90×109 7320 7.1×10−5 0.3 16.1 764
25% ZrO2 25 187×109 6960 1.2×10−5 0.2875 3.3 535
400 193×109 6960 1.91×10−5 0.2875 3.5 672
800 141×109 6960 3.65×10−5 0.2875 3.7 725
1200 76×109 6960 6.4×10−5 0.2875 6.2 743
50% ZrO2 25 158×109 6626 1.1×10−5 0.275 3.1 517
400 146×109 6626 1.9×10−5 0.275 3.8 621
800 89×109 6626 3.5×10−5 0.275 5.6 689
1200 61×109 6626 5.2×10−5 0.275 8.5 719
75% ZrO2 25 105×109 6208 9.11×10−6 0.2625 2.7 519
400 119×109 6208 1.51×10−5 0.2625 3.0 629
800 93×109 6208 2.96×10−5 0.2625 3.9 716
1200 52×109 6208 3.96×10−5 0.2625 5.1 734
100% ZrO2 25 53×109 6037 7.2×10−6 0.25b 1.5 500
400 52×109 6037 9.4×10−6 0.25 1.2 576
800 46×109 6037 1.6×10−5 0.25 1.2 637
1200 48×109 6037 2.2×10−6 0.25 1.1 656
K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76

a
From Ref. [15].
b
From Ref. [10].
 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76 69

Fig. 5. Microhardness distribution of duplex and FGM coatings.

Fig. 6. Cross-section microstructure of (a) 5-layer FGM coating and (b) duplex coatings.

temperature. Fig. 4 shows the variation of elastic mod-
ulus of five individual layers of FGM coating with an
increase in temperature. It can be observed that the
elastic modulus of the different layers decreases accord-
ingly with an increase in temperature. There is a dra-
matic decrease in the elastic modulus of NiCoCrAlY
layer with an increase in temperature whereas there is
little change in elastic modulus with an increase in
temperature for ZrO2 layer. The elastic modulus de-
creases with an increase in the content of ZrO2. From
the microhardness distributions of FGM coating and
duplex coating shown in Fig. 5, it can also be observed
that the microhardness changes gradually through the
five-layer FGM coating whereas a significant micro-
hardness difference exists between NiCoCrAlY and
ZrO2 layers for the duplex coating.
Fig. 6(a) and (b) shows the cross-section micrographs
of FGM coating and duplex coating, respectively.
From Fig. 6(a), it can be observed that NiCoCrAlY
gradually changes its distribution pattern from lamellar
pattern to dispersed pattern from NiCoCrAlY layer to
ZrO2 layer and the ZrO2 layer also changes gradually.
No clear interface between the two adjacent layers can
be observed. The gradient distribution of the two
phases in the coating can significantly decrease the high
thermal stress generated due to the sharp differences in
coefficient of thermal expansion and elastic modulus
between the two phases, NiCoCrAlY and ZrO2. For
duplex coating as shown in Fig. 6(b), there is a distinct
boundary between porous ZrO2 layer and dense NiC-
oCrAlY layer. Because of the large differences in elastic
modulus, coefficient of thermal expansion and hardness
between the two layers for duplex coating, there will be
large thermal and mechanical stresses generated at the
interface of the two layers during the thermal and
mechanical loading. It is these large thermal stresses
70 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76
that cause the deterioration of bond strength and spal-
lation or cracking of the duplex coating.
4.2. Residual stress distribution in as-sprayed FGM
and duplex coatings
4.2.1. Fi6e-layer FGM coating
Fig. 7 shows the distribution of the radial stress on
the surface and interfaces of the coating plotted along
the radius of the coating after cooling from the spray-
ing temperature of 427°C to room temperature. It can
be observed that the surface is usually compressive and
the compressive stresses change to tensile stresses grad-
ually with an increase in the distance from the surface
into the interface of the coating/substrate [16,17]. At
the surface and interfaces of 0% Ni/25% Ni, 25%
Ni/50% Ni and 50% Ni/75% Ni, the radial stresses
remain compressive. The compressive stresses decrease
abruptly near the edge of the specimen. At the interface
of coating and substrate and the interface of 100%
NiCoCrAlY layer and 75% NiCoCrAlY layer, the
stresses are tensile, and the maximum tensile stress of
40 MPa is near the edge of the specimen. The large
radial stresses on the surface of the coating may cause
the formation of surface crack.
Fig. 8(a) shows a typical contour plot of axial stress
distribution for five-layer coating. Large tensile stress is
generated near the edge of the specimen and at the
interface of the specimen and it will cause the spallation
of the coating [18]. This tensile stress decreases signifi-
cantly with the increase of distance from the edge of the
specimen. There is a compressive stress inside the coat-
ing near to this large tensile stress as shown in Fig. 8(a).
Fig. 7. Radial stress distribution along radius for five-layer coating.
Fig. 8(b) shows the distribution of axial stresses in the
interfaces. The maximum tensile axial stress of 49 MPa
between the interface is obtained at the edge of the
specimen. The axial stresses tend to decrease quickly
with the increase in the distance from the edge. This
large stress concentration near the interface and the
edge of the specimen can cause the spallation of the
coating.
Fig. 9(a) shows the contour plot of shear stress
distribution for five-layer FGM coating. The large in-
terface shear stresses are related to the interface crack.
The maximum stress (− 14 MPa) is obtained near the
edge within the 50% NiCoCrAlY layer of the coating,
as can be seen from Fig. 9(a). With the increase in the
distance from the edge to the center, the stresses de-
crease. The shear stress distribution at the interfaces
along radius is shown in Fig. 9(b). The shear stresses
show a remarkable stress concentration at or close to
the edge of the specimen. The stress concentration near
the edge may cause the spallation of the coating.
4.2.2. Effect of the number of layers for FGM and
duplex coatings with the same thickness
Fig. 10(a)–(c) shows the maximum radial stress, axial
stress and shear stress in 1-mm thick two-layer duplex
coating along with three-layer and five-layer FGM
coatings. As can be observed from Fig. 10, the highest
residual stresses are obtained in the duplex coating. The
residual stresses produced after plasma spraying pro-
cessing can be relaxed with the application of three-
layer and five-layer FGM coatings. For the two types
of FGM coatings, the residual stresses generated in
five-layer FGM coating are relatively lower in compari-
 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76 71

Fig. 8. Axial stress distribution of five-layer coating.

son with those of the three-layer FGM coating, because the maximum axial stress and shear stress decrease by
of a lower thermal expansion mismatch. The maximum 23 and 16 MPa, respectively. The maximum radial
radial stress for five-layer FGM coating decreases by 8 stress of all three types of coatings is on the surface of
MPa compared with that of the duplex coating, while the coating. The maximum axial stress is above the
72 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76

bond coat and shear stress is below the ZrO2 layer duplex coating and three-layer FGM coatings. The
which may generate the interface crack. radial stress, axial stress and shear stress results all
From the above analysis, the five-layer FGM coating show the minimum value for the five-layer FGM
has the lowest stresses compared with those of the coating.

Fig. 9. Shear stress distribution of five-layer coating.

 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76
Fig. 10. Comparison of stresses in different numbers of layers with
same thickness.
4.2.3. Effect of coating thickness
For the five-layer FGM coatings with a thickness of
600 mm and 1 mm, the distributions of residual stresses
are almost the same but the stress concentration be-
comes more severe for the 1-mm thick coating. The
maximum radial stress, axial stress and shear stress for
73
600-mm thick FGM coating compared with 1-mm thick
coating decrease by 6, 14 and 7 MPa, respectively. The
effect of the thickness on the stresses in the duplex
coatings is almost similar to that of the FGM coatings.
The thicker the coating, the larger the residual stresses
in the coating [19].
4.3. Bond strength
The bond strength of FGM coatings (with different
layers but the same thickness) prepared by manual
plasma spraying is shown in Fig. 11. Five-layer NiC-
oCrAlY/ZrO2 FGM coating has the highest bond
strength (13 MPa), while duplex coating exhibits the
lowest bond strength (5.46 MPa). With an increase in
number of intermediate layers, the bond strength of the
coating with the same thickness increases.
Results from finite element analysis shown in Fig. 10
can be used to explain these experimental results. As
can be observed from Fig. 10, the radial stress, axial
stress and shear stress are extremely high in duplex
coatings. It is these high stresses which cause the spalla-
tion, cracking and delamination of the duplex coating.
The residual stresses produced after the plasma spray-
ing process can be significantly relaxed with the appli-
cation of three-layer and five-layer FGM coatings as
can be found from Fig. 10. The residual stresses gener-
ated in five-layer FGM coating are relatively lower in
comparison with three-layer FGM coating, which can
be used to explain the relatively high bond strength of
five-layer FGM coatings.
Bond strength is observed to decrease with an in-
crease in the coating thickness as shown in Table 5.
One reason is that the larger the coating thickness, the
larger the residual thermal stresses, and this will cause
the degradation of bond strength. Compared to the
radial stresses, axial stresses, as well as the shear
stresses of the 600-mm thick five-layer FGM coatings,
the stress concentration for 1-mm thick coating is more
severe. For duplex coating, it is also revealed that the
thicker the coating, the larger the residual stresses in the
coating. However, compared with an FGM coating
with the same thickness, the duplex coating reveals a
much higher residual stress value. Another reason is
that with an increase in the coating thickness, the
defects, such as interplanar voids, pores, cracks, un-
melted particles and incomplete bonding between
lamellae will be increased, and these are detrimental to
the adhesion and cohesion of the as-sprayed coating.
4.4. Residual stress and thermal cycling resistance
4.4.1. Finite element analysis results
The finite element analysis of thermal cycling is con-
centrated on the simulated thermal stresses during a
cooling period of one thermal cycle from room temper-
74 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76
Fig. 11. Bond strength of coatings with different layers (coating thickness: 600 mm).
ature to 1300°C. The distributions and changes of the
radial stress, axial stress and shear stress during this
cooling period for FGM and duplex coatings were
compared.
Fig. 12(a) shows the maximum radial stress distribu-
tion (in the surface of ZrO2 layer) during cooling for
duplex coating and FGM coating at different times.
The duplex coating has larger radial stresses than FGM
coating, which indicates that the duplex coating is more
prone to surface cracking than FGM coating during
thermal cycling. The radial stress for FGM coatings
reaches the maximum value of 127 MPa after 5 s,
then decreases with the increase of the cooling dura-
tion. This phenomenon is because during thermal cy-
cling, when the cool air shocks the coating surface, the
surface coating shrinks significantly to cause the tran-
sient maximum tensile stress generated at the surface of
the coating. This transient maximum tensile stress will
cause the generation of the orthogonal cracks on the
coating surface [20]. Orthogonal cracks may open in the
ceramic top coat and grow due to tensile stresses during
cooling [21,22]. With the increase in the cooling dura-
tion, the differences in temperature for both duplex
coating and FGM coating decrease and therefore, the
thermal stresses gradually decrease.
Fig. 12(b) and (c) shows the maximum tensile axial
stress and tensile shear stress during cooling for the
duplex and FGM coatings. As expected, the FGM
coating has lower axial stresses and shear stresses, and
this phenomenon indicates that the duplex coating is
easy to spall during the cooling process of thermal
cycling. The maximum tensile axial and shear stresses
are obtained after 10 s of cooling period for both the
FGM coating and duplex coating. This high transient
tensile stress will cause the generation of interface
cracks and cause the spallation of coatings. With an
increase in cooling duration, the residual stresses gradu-
ally decrease, as shown in Fig. 12(b) and (c).
4.4.2. Thermal cycling resistance
Duplex and FGM 5-mm thick coatings were heated
and cooled cyclically between room temperature and
1300°C. The sharp increase in dilatation was considered
as the failure mechanism when the coatings failed under
thermal cycling. The thermal cycling results of duplex
coating and five-layer FGM coating are shown in Table
6. It can be observed that the resistance of the FGM
coating to the thermal cycling is much better than that
of the duplex coating.
The performance of plasma sprayed coatings during
thermal cycling is related directly to the generation of
thermal fatigue cracks due to the role of thermal resid-
ual stress in coatings. According to the finite element
analysis results shown in Fig. 12, the duplex coating has
higher radial stress than the FGM coating which indi-
cates that duplex coating is more prone to surface
cracking than FGM coating during thermal cycling.
Also the lower axial stresses and shear stresses in the
Table 5
Bond strength of five-layer FGM coating with different thicknesses
Thickness (mm) Bond strength (MPa)
0.6 13.000
1 6.979
 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76 75

the significant decrease in residual stresses and the

increase in cohesive strength.

5. Conclusions

The microstructure, microhardness, elastic modulus,

coefficient of thermal expansion and thermal conductiv-
ity/diffusivity were found to change gradually in the
five-layer FGM coating.
For 1-mm thick five-layer as-sprayed FGM coating,
the maximum compressive radial stress (− 72 MPa) is
found to be at or near the surface of the specimen
where surface cracking may be generated. The maxi-
mum axial stress (49 MPa) is at the edge of the speci-
men where spallation may occur. The maximum shear
stress (− 14 MPa) is also at or close to the edge.
With an increase in the number of layers with the
same thickness of coatings, the bond strength of coat-
ings increases. The bond strength of as-sprayed FGM
coating is twice as high as that of the duplex coating
because of the significant reduction in the residual
thermal stresses. The duplex coating is prone to crack-
ing and delamination due to the mismatch of thermal
expansion coefficient between the ZrO2 and NiC-
oCrAlY layers. It can be verified that the stress concen-
tration in the coating is reduced by using the
functionally graded distribution of the coating. The
five-layer graded coating is a feasible design because its
architecture can prevent the crack initiation of the
coating. With an increase in the coating thickness, the
bond strength decreases, which can be attributed to the
higher residual stresses and an increase in the defects in
the thicker coating.
During thermal cycling, the surface cracks and the
interface cracks of the coating are usually produced by
the transient tensile stress which is the largest at the
onset of the cooling process. The thermal cycling life of
five-layer FGM coating is five times higher than that of
the duplex coating which can be indicated from the
FEA results.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the support of the

School of Mechanical and Production Engineering,
Fig. 12. Stress distribution during cooling for duplex and FGM
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in the
coatings. form of research grants RP 56/92 and RG 25/96.

Table 6
Thermal cycling resistance of duplex and FGM coatings
FGM coating indicate that the duplex coating is easy to
Duplex Five-layer FGM
spall during the thermal cycling cooling process. In
brief, the reason for the improvement of thermal cy- Thermal cycling (cycles) 15 90
cling resistance for FGM coating can be attributed to
76 K.A. Khor, Y.W. Gu / Materials Science and Engineering A277 (2000) 64–76
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