Calcium-magnesium aluminosilicate (CMAS) reactions and degradation mechanisms of advanced environmental barrier coatings

The thermochemical reactions between calcium-magnesium-aluminosilicate (CMAS) based road sand and several advanced turbine engine environmental barrier coating (EBC) materials were studied. The phase stability, reaction kinetics and degradation mechanisms of rare earth (RE)-silicates Yb2SiO5 and Y2Si2O7 and RE-oxide doped HfO2 and ZrO2 under the CMAS infiltration condition at 1500 °C were investigated, and the microstructure and phase characteristics of CMAS-EBC specimens were examined using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD). Experimental results showed that the CMAS dissolved RE-silicates to form crystalline, highly non-stoichiometric apatite phases, and in particular attacking the silicate grain boundaries. Cross-section images show that the CMAS reacted with specimens and deeply penetrated into the EBC grain boundaries and formed extensive low-melting eutectic phases, causing grain boundary recession with increasing testing time in the silicate materials. The preliminary results also showed that CMAS reactions also formed low melting grain boundary phases in the higher concentration RE-oxide doped HfO2 systems. The effect of the test temperature on CMAS reactions of the EBC materials will also be discussed. The faster diffusion exhibited by apatite and RE-doped oxide phases and the formation of extensive grain boundary low-melting phases may limit the CMAS resistance of some of the environmental barrier coatings at high temperatures.