Wear behavior of flame sprayed nanostructured titania coatings

Abstract

Various pressures of compressed air were introduced into the flame spraying torch and the protective coatings of nanostructured and conventional titania (TiO2) were deposited on low carbon steel substrates. Performance of the coatings was studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), hardness measurement, porosity measurement and the best coating was selected for further analyses. A Nanostructured and conventional samples were exposed to ASTM G65 and C633 standard tests and the outcome was analyzed using confocal and electron microscopy. A nanostructured coating was found to outperform the conventional counterpart due to the presence of a bimodal microstructure, which increases the plastic deformation and crack resistance of the ceramic. The nanostructured coating was analyzed using X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and eventually its crack propagation resistance was quantified. The coating was also tested in a highly corrosive H2S environment and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) verified its fair resistance against that environment.