|
6539 |
|
Assessment and improvement of wear resistance of thermally-sprayed coating-based heating systems |
|
Milad Rezvani-Rad* / University of Alberta, Canada A. McDonald / University of Alberta, Canada Kingsley Ngaokere/ University of Alberta, Canada Daniel Hayden/ Hayden Corporation, USA |
|
Failure of pipes due to ice formation and accumulation causes significant financial losses in the industry. Thermal-sprayed coatings have been developed to mitigate the issue. Both cold-sprayed tin and flame-sprayed NiCr coatings were found to be proper heating elements when they are deposited on alumina, which is the electrically insulating layer between the metal coating and the substrate. However, the vulnerability of the coating-based heating systems to potential wear still hinders the mainstream application of thermal spray technology in fabrication of temperature protection systems for pipelines. Therefore, to quantify and assess the wear resistance of the coating heating systems, several tests were conducted based on ASTM G65 and ASTM G76 standards. Thermally-sprayed polymers, which can improve coating performance by providing surface protection against wear were also deposited on the heating elements to protect the heating system. It was found that multifaceted advantages can be obtained by deposition of the polymer coatings. As a result, the reliability of the coating system can be increased significantly under adverse atmospheric conditions. This suggests that the addition of the proposed polymer layer improves the longevity of the coating-based heaters and facilitates their production on an industrial scale. Keywords: Cold spray, Flame spray, Polymer coating, Resistive heating system, Wear resistance |