Peridynamic Simulation of Cracking Behavior in Thermal Barrier Coatings

Cracking-induced fracture in thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) is one of the most severe failure mechanisms among TBCs failure cases. Current numerical simulation of cracking behavior in TBCs are mostly developed by FEM-based methods, which have their own disadvantages. The concept of peridynamic (PD) is proposed and developed these years to deal with discontinuous problems, providing new ideas to simulate crack initiation and propagation in TBCs. In this paper, a PD-based numerical model of TBCs is built to discuss cracking behavior in the top coat (TC) layer. Simulation results validate the effectiveness and accuracy of PD in TBCs cracking analysis, compared with SEM observations. And effects of pre-existed cracks in TC, which could obviously interfere original crack propagation path, are also proved and discussed. It could be concluded that PD would be a powerful tool in TBCs crack propagation predictions if provided with more supportive experiment data.