Thermal barrier coatings (TBC) are used to protect hot path components of gas turbines from hot combustion gases. Depending on the operating conditions, solid particle erosion can be an issue for TBCs, as a matter of fact sand, volcanic ashes could enter into the turbine promoting erosion. Electron beam physical vapour deposition (EB-PVD) coatings exhibit better solid particle erosion than PS TBCs.

Nowadays segmented APS coatings and PS – PVD have been developed to improve solid particle erosion of plasma sprayed TBCs. At RSE solid particle erosion tests have been performed on TBC with different microstructures for comparison purposes. As a first step to forecast erosion in gas turbine, the laboratory jet tester has been simulated by a simple analytical model describing the speed of erodent particles as a function of their size and shape. By this way, for each TBC type, the volume eroded by a single particle is estimated and a rough evaluation of the overall erosion rate can obtained, after preliminary calibration of the model starting from experimental data. Forecasts of erosion rate for four type of TBCs (standard porous APS, EB-PVD, PS-PVDTM and highly segmented APS) depending on test conditions are discussed.