Prediction of Remaining Life Time Based on Measurements of Stress for Thermal Barrier Coatings

Non-destructive determination of the remaining life of coatings of gas turbine parts is highly desirable. The present paper describes early attempts to prove the feasibility of doing this based on the optical measurement of the stress in the oxide that attaches the coating to the metal component. Both regression methods and neural network methods are compared and it was found that the neural network approach was superior for the case where multiple signal features were present. All methods provide useful predictions for the idealized case considered. Challenges presented by more complicated thermal cycles are discussed briefly.