Solid particle erosion of an environmental barrier coating and chemically vapor infiltrated SiC/SiC for aeroengine

Environmental barrier coating (EBC) can reduce the environmental susceptibility of turbine blades due to the increasing problems of high temperature oxidation and vapor corrosion in heating parts of aeroengine made by SiC/SiC. However, in addition to high-temperature corrosion, EBC may be subject to solid particle erosion (SPE) due to sands and peeled coatings. The erosion mechanism is insufficiently studied, and the impact erosion to SiC/SiC is seldom noticed. In this paper, the SPE behavior of SiC/SiC prepared by chemical vapor infiltration (CVI), which was coated with Si/Yb₂Si₂O₇/Yb₂SiO₅ rare earth silicate EBC prepared by atmospheric plasma spraying (APS), was studied, and the EBC-SiC/SiC were impacted in normal direction by SiO₂ particles with multiple particle sizes and flow rates. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to observe the damage morphology, and the effects of different flow rates, energies and particle sizes on the SPE behaviors of EBC-SiC/SiC were analyzed. A meso-scale model of progressive damage method - finite element method (PDM-FEM) was built and the SiO₂ particle erosion mechanism for single layer SiC/SiC was simulated, analyzed and compared with the experimental results.