<title>Application of NDE in aerospace coatings</title>

Abstract

Wear resistant cermet coatings are used in aircraft landing gears and thermal barrier coatings (TBC) are applied to hot- section components of turbine engines. A series of experiments have been conducted to characterize cermet and TBC coatings using NDE techniques. A cermet coating is tested using conventional ultrasonic and eddy current methods as well as an ultrasonic leaky surface wave technique. The results demonstrate the ability of these techniques to detect the presence of defects on the surface or beneath the surface of the coating and at the coating- substrate interface. Ultrasonic time-of-flight and eddy current quadrature measurements also show the ability to detect minute changes in the thickness of cermet coatings. Knowing the coating thickness, the density of the coating is estimated by comparison of the theoretical and the experimental transfer functions of the ultrasonic signals. NDE techniques were also used to inspect thermal barrier coatings. In particular, eddy current technique was used to measure the thickness of plasma-sprayed TBC specimens, and knowing the thickness, ultrasonic techniques were applied to obtain an estimate of the porosity content.