Fundamental understanding of relationships between coating microstructure and thermal conductivity is important to be able to understand the influence of coating defects, such as delaminations and pores, on heat insulation in thermal barrier coatings (TBC). Object Oriented Finite element analysis (OOF) has recently been shown as an effective tool for evaluating thermo-mechanical material behaviour as this method is capable of incorporating the inherent material microstructure as an input to the model. The objective of this work was to evaluate a procedure where this technique is combined with Tbctool, a plasma-sprayed TBC like morphology generator, thus enabling development of low thermal conductivity coatings by simulation. Input parameters for Tbctool were computed from SEM images of sprayed microstructures using the image analysis software, Aphelion. Microstructures for as-sprayed as well as heat treated samples were evaluated. The thermal conductivities of the artificially generated microstructures were determined using OOF. Verification of the modelling procedure was performed by comparing predicted values by OOF with corresponding measured values using the laser flash technique. The results, although tentative in nature, indicate that the proposed simulation approach can be a powerful tool in the development of new low conductivity coatings.
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