Laser ultrasound technique applied in material characterization of thermally sprayed nickel aluminum coatings

Thermal spraying processing usually uses a nickel-aluminum alloy system as the major powder due to its strong adhesion to substrates. The contents of powder material and the processing parameters used in the spraying process cause material properties of coatings exhibiting a wide variation. This research aims at nondestructive characterization of thermal spraying coatings. A laser-generation/laser-detection laser ultrasound technique (LUT) is used for the measurements of dispersion spectra of surface waves propagating along the coated surfaces. Theoretical model for surface waves propagating along a multi-layered structure with coating and substrate is used to model the sprayed coatings. An inversion algorithm based on Shuffled Complex Evolution (SCE-UA) is used to extract mechanical properties from the measured dispersion spectra cooperating with theoretical model. Three coatings with different sprayed powders and powder processing are investigated. Results indicate that substantial linear scatterings are observed for the inverted properties due to the measured dispersion spectra with limited bandwidth inherited from the relatively high attenuations. The slope of linear scattering can be used to distinguish the coating properties. The ANiBNb sample with ball-milled coating has the best properties based on its highest velocity and least attenuation. This method is potentially useful to characterize the mechanical properties of thermally spraying coating in a nondestructive way.