SATURN: The Carbon Trust programme

STS develops APS sensor coatings for high temperature measurements. TBCs are refractory coatings that provide thermal insulation to turbine blades/vanes and are also used as combustion chamber liners in power generation and aviation gas turbines.
Up to now, TBCs have been used to extend the life of turbine components. However, there is a growing recognition that, to increase turbine performance further, coatings will face higher temperatures.

The development of sensor coatings will assist in achieving the requirements of higher efficiency/lower emission gas turbines while reducing maintenance costs. This will be accomplished by allowing in-situ measurements to be made of temperature, erosion and phase changes in the TBCs while the turbine is in operation.

The main technical objectives of the project are to:

Identify a material composition that produces a luminescent response (and thereby enables temperature sensing) between a temperature range of 1000 and 1300˚C.

Ensure the coatings are of a quality equal to that of current standard coatings through endurance tests such as thermal cycling, thermo-mechanical fatigue, thermal shock and thermal gradient.

Design, develop and build an optical probe which will enable the delivery of excitation energy and collection of the phosphorescence for subsequent measurement and analysis.

The project is being undertaken by STS, a spin out company from Imperial College London created to continue development on sensor coatings, building on research conducted at the College in the late 1990s. The original research was co-sponsored by Rolls-Royce plc. Rolls-Royce has continued its interest by providing technical advice to the project and offering to perform some thermal shock integrity testing.

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