Automotive
High performance motor cars use metal sprayed ceramic coatings to provide a highly effective thermal barrier on exhausts, turbo’s and brake parts which enables high performance vehicles to run at cooler temperatures. The ceramic coatings work by preventing heat transfer, which means an increase in power and reduced heat input to other components. A typical drop of 25ºC in under bonnet temperature will result in decreased intake temperature, which can give up to a 5% increase in power and significantly increases ancillary reliability. The ceramic coatings can reduce surface temperatures by up to 160ºC and can withstand temperatures of up to 1400ºC. This compares with typical standard ceramic containing paint, which may only reduce surface temperatures by up to 9%.
The ceramic coating contains magnesia / zirconia and offers the best thermal barrier coating. The coating is creamy white in colour, with a slightly rough surface texture. There is an alternative darker plasma ceramic coating, which contains alumina/titania and has a grey coloured appearance.
Protection Against Thermal Shock
Heat resistant surfaces produced by the metal spraying process have many applications; the photograph shows a rather unusual variation of this theme. Two independent exhaust systems, fabricated from steel tube in the Ford GT.40 sports car, have been metal sprayed with 175 microns (0.007”) of aluminium using the Metallisation Fine spray electric arc techniques. The treatment has been found to be fully effective in overcoming the extremes of heat oxidation and thermal shock from the output of this high performance engine.
