Performance of HVOF-Sprayed Carbide Coatings in Aqueous Corrosive Environments

The HVOF technology is well known to provide a wide variety of coating materials having excellent performance characteristics under different aggressive conditions such as wear, erosion by impact of particle and corrosion. Carbides, as a family, constitute a big segment of materials used by the thermal spray industry. Although their material properties may be well known since they are often used in wear or corrosive-wear industrial applications, aqueous corrosion of such coatings are not well characterized. Moreover, thermal spray process technology being in constant evolution, past literature on these coatings may not be directly applicable as newer produced coatings have higher adhesive and cohesive strength. Recent technology allows a better control on density and oxides content that are important parameters to consider for corrosion applications. The success of a coating is related to judicious material selection for various applications. However, the choice of the starting materials for producing a coating is often difficult since there is a lack of data on the corrosion performance of thermal spray coatings. The present paper addresses the performance of various carbide HVOF coatings in terms of corrosion rate and degradation mode in two corrosive environments — HCl and HNO3. Behavior of the coatings is compared using bulk SS316 and SS316 HVOF coating as a benchmark.