In-situ observation of crack propagation in thermally sprayed coatings

In-situ observation of thermally sprayed coating fractures may complement classical fractographic analysis to study specific failure mechanisms. In this paper, fracture of free-standing plasma sprayed ceramic (alumina) and metallic (stainless steel 316L) coatings during 3-point bending (3PB) was observed in-situ using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) in order to identify the most important failure mechanisms. Observations were supplemented by fractographic analysis of fractured specimens.