Research Projects

In recent years, energy crises and environmental safety concerns have drawn tremendous attention to humanity. To cater to this need of the society, various energy-generating devices were underused. These devices were subjected to very high temperatures in their working environments. This creates engineering challenges for the material scientists to retain the structural stability of various stress-bearing components engaged to generate the power in a harsh and high temperature environment. To overcome this problem, the concept of thermal barrier coatings was invented. But these ceramic coatings have their own inherent disadvantages, such as brittle fracture and chipping out of the substrate during their operation, thus creating premature failure that has not yet been precisely addressed. Due to these issues, it now requires a serious mechanism to predict the life of these coatings for a sustainable period of operation. In this project, both numerical and modeling work will be done to quantify the rate of growth of the crack initiated during the working thermal fatigue cycle. The crack growth rate will be measured, and a model will be created to predict the life of the thermal barrier coating. This information will be very useful to the maintenance department of such workstations and will save a considerable amount of money, energy, and related environmental issues.