Porous Ceramic Coating for Transpiration Cooling of Gas Turbine Blade

A transpiration cooling system for gas turbine applications has significant benefit for reducing the amount of cooling air and increasing cooling efficiency. In this paper, the porous ceramic coating, which can infiltrate cooling gas, is developed with plasma spraying process, and the properties of the porous coating material such as permeability of cooling gas, thermal conductivity, and adhesion strength are examined. The mixture of 8 wt.% yttria-stabilized zirconia and polyester powders was employed as the coating material, in order to deposit the porous ceramic coating onto Ni-based super alloy substrate. It was shown that the porous ceramic coating has superior permeability for cooling gas. The adhesion strength of the porous coating was low only 20% compared with the thermal barrier coating utilized in current gas turbine blades. Simulation test of hot gas flow around the gas turbine blade verified remarkable reduction of the coating surface temperature by the transpiration cooling mechanism. It was concluded that the transpiration cooling system for the gas turbine could be achieved using the porous ceramic coating developed in this study.