National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is interested in Made in India thermal spray coating technology. This technology is used for gas turbine engine in spacecraft. This has been developed by a Rajasthan based researcher, Dr. Satish Tailor. He is working with Jodhpur based Metallizing Equipment Company (MEC).
“In simple language, vertical cracks (segmentation) in the coating are beneficial for gas turbine engine application used in spacecraft,” Dr. Tailor said. The technology used here is called controlled segmented Yttria-Stabilised Zirconia (YSZ). This is a plasma sprayed coating technology.
This has the potential to lower the cost of normal thermal coating by 50%. “At present, researchers are developing such cracks through very expensive processes (in several crore) and cracks are generated during the coating deposition process, and crack generation is not controllable,” he said.
This develops vertical cracks in the coating, which is beneficial for the gas engine in spacecrafts. This will make strain tolerant coating more economical. Dr. Taylor mentioned that he had shared his research paper with a NASA scientist James Smialek, who wrote him an e-mail about this. Scientist working at leading organizations such as he Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) are also impressed with this research.
Chief scientist at CSIR said that this approach has potential of wider industrial/strategic acceptability. Dr. Tailor has a PhD in metallurgical engineering from the Malaviya Institute of Technology, Jaipur, with a specialization in plasma spray coatings.