Effect of porous microstructure on the elastic modulus of plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coatings: Experiment and numerical analysis

In addition, the image-based finite element method (FEM) was proposed according to the SEM observation. Several factors of pores and cracks were taken into account to explain the effect of porous microstructure on elastic modulus of coatings. The simulation results show that the crack length has significant effect on the elastic modulus of coatings, while the distance ratio of pores (DRP) was found to be a negligible factor. Finally, a method for the estimation of the effective properties of coatings based on the 2D models and the principle of superposition was proposed and proved to be practicable.