Published on: 2026-06-17
Source: Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University of Peter the Great –
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Scientists from the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University have practically mastered the technology of applying thermal barrier and heat-resistant coatings to working blades of gas turbine units. The technology will increase the reliability and extend the uninterrupted operational life of gas turbine units that serve the gas industry of Russia.
During the operation of the most complex equipment, necessary for the transportation of gas through the main pipelines, turbine blades experience extreme thermal and mechanical loads. After the withdrawal from the Russian market of a number of foreign suppliers, the issue of servicing and providing spare parts for gas production equipment has become especially acute. To ensure the efficient operation of the entire unit, the blades are coated with a special protective coating. The search for materials and methods of applying it is currently the most important issue of the country’s energy sovereignty.
Engineers at Politechnika have developed and applied in practice technologies for applying thermobarrier and heat-resistant coatings to the working blades of the first and second stages of the T32 “Ladoga” gas turbine unit. The coatings meet all the requirements of the customer and the operating organization.
This development is an example of how the fundamental competencies of our institute in the field of materials science are transformed into a ready engineering solution for a real economic sector. After years of foreign suppliers, the industry faced the urgent task of providing a full maintenance cycle for gas compression equipment with its own resources. It is fundamentally important that the technology has been brought not just to the laboratory sample, but to a product that meets all the customer’s requirements.It is precisely such decisions, born in the close partnership of science and industry, that form the technological sovereignty of a country, emphasized the director of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Materials, and Transport of SPbPU Anatoly Popovich.
In general, the thermal barrier coating represents a multilayer system. To form it, we used two complementary technologies. First, using high-speed gas-flame spraying, we applied a bonding layer to protect the blade from oxidation, as well as to compensate for the difference in thermal expansion coefficients between the base material (blade metal) and the protective ceramic.Then, on top of this layer, using the atmospheric plasma spraying method, they formed a ceramic layer that also absorbs thermal shock during the operation of the gas turbine unit, Dmitry Masaylo, a leading research associate at the scientific and educational center “Structural and Functional Materials” of SPbPU, noted.
For the seemingly simple technology — years of laboratory work and hundreds of experiments, researchers note. The sputtering technologies themselves are well described in the literature, and obtaining a qualitative coating on a simple laboratory sample is relatively uncomplicated. Difficulties begin when transferring from a flat metal plate to a complex-profile turbine blade, where it is necessary to ensure a uniform coating thickness across the entire surface of the product. It was this problem-solving that took engineers more time than selecting the sputtering modes.
Also, with the support of the “Priority-2030” program of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, scientists are conducting research to create fundamentally new materials for the bonding layer. This will allow increasing the service life of the protective coating for the parts of gas pumping units. Analysis of scientific and technical literature and discussions with industry specialists have shown that it is precisely the bonding layer between the turbine blade metal and the ceramic that determines the service life and reliability of the entire product, and the currently existing materials for it have a number of limitations.
New challenges in the industry have given a strong impetus to work on creating new materials based on high-entropy alloys. They possess unique properties compared to traditional alloys. This is a relatively new direction in materials science, and much here is still being discovered for the first time. The introduction of new alloys will take time: the chemical compositions of the applied materials are strictly regulated by current regulatory documents, so new solutions will have to go through a full cycle of research, resource testing, and certification.”We are confident that our experience and competence will allow us to successfully cope with this task,” noted Artem Kim, engineer of the “Synthesis of new materials and constructions” laboratory at SPbPU.
In the foreseeable future, the team will continue working both in the area of improving the new coating application method and in the area of creating a new coating formulation.
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