Hierarchical Formation of Intrasplat Cracks in Thermal Spray Ceramic Coatings

Intrasplat cracks, an essential feature of thermally sprayed ceramic coatings, play important roles in determining coating properties. However, final intrasplat crack patterns are always considered to be disordered and irregular, resulting from random cracking during splat cooling, since the detailed formation process of intrasplat cracks has scarcely been considered. In the present study, the primary formation mechanism for intrasplat cracking was explored based on both experimental observations and mechanical analysis. The results show that the intrasplat crack pattern in thermally sprayed ceramic splats presents a hierarchical structure with four sides and six neighbors, indicating that intrasplat crack patterns arise from successive domain divisions due to sequential cracking during splat cooling. The driving forces for intrasplat cracking are discussed, and the experimental data quantitatively agree well with theoretical results. This will provide insight for further coating structure designs and tailoring by tuning of intrasplat cracks.