Heat Transfer Analysis in Nanostructured Thermal Barrier Coatings Using a Half Boundary Method Framework

Abstract

This study introduces a computational framework based on the Half-Boundary Method (HBM) for the analysis of steady, nonlinear heat transfer in nanostructured thermal barrier coating (TBC) systems relevant to gas turbine applications. The proposed method aims to precisely resolve temperature fields in multilayer coating-substrate setups while substantially reducing computational costs compared to traditional domain-based numerical techniques. To capture key thermal properties relevant to turbine operating conditions, we include temperature-dependent thermal conductivity and a thermally grown oxide (TGO) layer. The HBM framework is validated using a set of benchmark challenges encompassing continuous, discontinuous, and nonlinear heat-conduction scenarios, which are subsequently applied to a typical multilayer TBC–substrate arrangement under realistic thermal boundary conditions. The results show that they match finite element solutions quite well, with differences of less than 0.1% and quick convergence. The research underscores the utility of HBM as an effective numerical instrument for thermal analysis and initial design evaluation of coated turbine components, establishing a basis for future advancements in fully coupled thermo-mechanical deterioration modeling.