Experiments and modeling of multilayered coatings and membranes : application to thermal barrier coatings and reverse osmosis membranes

Abstract

In this thesis, I developed a novel methodology for characterizing interfacial delamination of thermal barrier coatings. The proposed methodology involves novel experiments-plus numerical simulations in order to determine the material parameters describing such failure when the interface is modeled using traction-separation constitutive laws. Furthermore, a coupled fluid-permeation and large deformation theory is proposed for crosslinked polymers with a view towards application to reverse-osmosis. A systematic simulation plus experiment-based methodology is proposed in order to calibrate the material parameters of the theory. Finally, the process of reverse osmosis is studied in the context of water desalination. An experimental set-up is proposed in order to characterize the thin-film composite membranes widely used in the industry, and a preliminary set of experiments are performed.