COATLIFE: Predicting
Remaining Life of
Combustion
Turbine Coatings
Mechanics & Materials
COATLIFE Version 4.0 (COATLIFE-4.0) is a life-prediction software developed at SwRI under DOE and EPRI sponsorship, for predicting the remaining life of combustion turbine coatings in land-based gas turbine machines. The primary failure modes of combustion turbine (CT) coatings are coating degradation caused by oxidation and thermomechanical fatigue (TMF) cracking. The coating failure caused by degradation is commonly observed in blades that operated in a base-loaded machine, while coating cracking caused by TMF is widely seen in blades that operated in peak loaded machines. The blades are normally refurbished when the TMF cracks are limited to the coating thickness. Both coating failure modes are separately treated in COATLIFE-4.0, which now includes a user-friendly Excel-based spreadsheet program for ranking, selecting, and estimating remaining service life of a variety of metallic coatings, including overlay, diffusion, and duplex coatings, as well as air-plasma-sprayed (APS) thermal barrier coatings (TBC). COATLIFE-4.0, has been extensively validated for both oxidation and thermomechanical fatigue failure mechanisms for both metallic and APS-TBC coatings. COATLIFE-4.0 is currently utilized or evaluated by a number of plant operators for assessing coating conditions during service.
This brief SwRI press release presents an overview to the release of COATLIFE-4.0.
For additional information, please contact:
Kwai Chan, Ph.D.
Institute Scientist
Mechanics and Materials
(210) 522-2053
kchan@swri.org
Related Terminology
COATLIFE • mechanics and materials • structural integrity • reliability assessment • mechanical behavior • mechanical characterization, fatigue life characterization • crack growth • corrosion fatigue • probabilistic mechanics • uncertainty modeling • bone fracture • bone properties
