Porosity, mechanical properties, residual stresses of supersonic plasma-sprayed Ni-based alloy coatings prepared at different powder feed rates

The aim of this paper was to investigate the effect of powder feed rate (PFR) on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the supersonic plasma-sprayed Ni–Cr–B–Si–C coatings. The microstructure, porosity and mechanical properties of the coatings and the residual stresses at the coating surfaces were experimentally determined. Results showed that the variations of porosity, elastic moduli and micro-hardness of the coatings followed Weibull distribution. From the statistical trend, the porosity of the coating increased with increasing PFR. However, the elastic modulus and the micro-hardness of the coating decreased and reached local minima and then increased with increasing PFR. Elastic modulus could be generally considered to be an increasing function of micro-hardness. The mean value of the elastic modulus of the coating calculated from Weibull plot was almost proportional to the square root of the mean value of the micro-hardness of the coating. Moreover, with increasing PFR, the residual stress at the coating surface, which was mainly governed by the elastic modulus of the coating, decreased to a local minimum and then increased.