Offshore wind turbine bearing systems have to cope with extreme loads produced by giant components on the nacelle and withstand marine corrosive environment. The idle, star-up or shut-down conditions due to wind cut-off can breakdown tribo-film in rotating and lubricated parts of the turbine resulting in high friction and wear. Hard coatings alongside with proper lubrication systems are essential to overcome this challenge. The present work aim is to test the wear properties of thermally sprayed silicon carbide coating obtained with detonation gun. Due to SiC nature that easily decomposes at high temperature process, the SiC powder feedstock has been modified beforehand to hinder this phenomenon. This modification also allows sintering of SiC during spraying. The wear characteristics of the thermaly sprayed SiC coatings has been tested with a reciprocating pin-on-disk tribometer under dry, saltwater and lubricated conditions. The coefficient of friction of the as-sparyed SiC coating shows lowest value in the lubricated sliding and highest value in the dry condition.
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