Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The development of protective coatings (PC) presents very important challenges and opportunities with a strong impact on sustainable development as well as significant economic and environmental benefits in many industrial sectors including aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, biomedical, mining, energy and others. Despite the progress in PC fabrication processes and coating architectures, the acceptance and further advances in this area are frequently limited by high residual stress in the coating systems, primarily related to the lack of fundamental and comprehensive knowledge of the stress generating mechanisms, their complex relation to the microstructure, and the availability of pathways to compensate for it, and even how to include it in the coating system design. In response to these technological challenges and goals, the FCSEL team at Polytechnique Montreal (PM), in collaboration with MDS Coating Technologies (MCT) and IHI Hauzer Techno Coating BV (Hauzer), proposes to investigate new approaches for the assessment and control of microstructure and stress in advanced protective coatings. Specifically, within the proposed project, we will study the origins and management strategies of residual stresses present in hard PC systems using highly complementary deposition techniques, determine their impact on in operando coated component performance, and develop laboratory-based methodologies to measure residual stress distribution in coated parts. Through our collaboration with our industrial partners, the goal is to accelerate implementation of new PC deposition technologies in areas of primary importance for Canada, especially in aerospace and manufacturing.