Solid particle erosion wear of plasma sprayed NiTi alloy used for aerospace applications

Erosion is a severe wear phenomenon of compressor blade in aircraft where continuously solid dust particles strike the surface. So coating is essential to increase the life of the blade materials as well as the casing. In the aircraft engine, we have to keep focus on high wear resistance and high temperature resistant before choosing the materials to be a coat. In this present investigation, Ni-Ti powder has been taken as coating materials due to its advanced properties like pseudoelasticity, high damping properties etc. Homogenized Ni-Ti powder has sprayed using atmospheric plasma spray process. Surface and interface morphology of the as-deposited material has been studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the presence of the different phases revealed by using X-Ray diffractometry (XRD) and microhardness found out by Vickers hardness tester. The as-deposited coating exposed to airborne particle erosion to investigate its wear properties by varying the erodent impact pressure and angle. Again the eroded surface has been studied by SEM, XRD and hardness test. It is found that the plasma spray Ni-Ti splats are well formed. NiTi and its derived intermetallics and oxide phases significantly present at the surface and interface that contributes the dense splat formation and higher hardness.