Microstructure and anti-ablation of laser cladding Ti-Zr-B-C coating on TC11 titanium alloy

To enhance the service life and application range of titanium alloys in the aerospace sector, Ti-Zr-B-C coatings with varying B4C contents (0-30 wt%) on TC11 titanium alloy was fabricated by laser cladding. The microstructure and anti-ablation were investigated in the present work. The results show that the whisker-like TiB phases and granular TiC and ZrC phases were observed in the coatings due to the in-situ reactions. With increasing the content of B4C, the number of reinforcing phases in the coating increased and distributed uniformly, resulting in the improvement of the microhardness up to 803.8HV. Furthermore, due to the formation of TiO2-ZrO2-B2O3 dense multiphase oxide layer on the surface during the ablation process, the coating with 20 wt % B4C exhibited the best anti-ablation at 1400ºC, the mass ablation rate (MAR) and linear ablation rate (LAR) were -2.62 mg/s and 3.67μm/s, respectively, which were just 62.8% and 50.07% in comparison with the substrate. This is mainly attributed to the formation of TiO2-ZrO2-B2O3 layer is beneficial to reduce the infiltration of O2 and the evaporation of liquid B2O3, leading to the excellent anti-ablation.