Residual stress measurement by Piezospectroscopy of cross sections through thermal barrier coatings

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Piezo-spectroscopic measurements of the residual stress in the TGO have been demonstrated on cross sections through thermally cycled TBC systems with high spatial resolution (approximately 2 × 2 × 5 µm). The residual stress is perturbed by relaxation at the free surface, but this can be taken into account in an approximate way. This relaxation has a range approximately equal to the YSZ thickness indicating that the YSZ imposes significant mechanical constraint on the TGO despite its low modulus.The measurements have shown that the non-planar morphology of the TGO induces large deviations from the thermo-elastic equi-biaxial stress expected for a planar TGO. The mean level of compressive residual stress is reduced by relaxation due to bending of the non-planar TGO, in agreement with elastic FEM analysis of sinusoidal TGO morphology. However, the real morphology is not sinusoidal and in some locations the local curvature is extremely high. In these regions the residual stress is observed to become tensile and as high as 1 GPa. The failure mechanism is by nucleation and growth of local damaged regions caused by these tensile stresses (which are evident as low stress regions on analysis through the YSZ) into larger regions that eventually become unstable to large-scale buckling and spalling.