The initiation and propagation of cracks are crucial to the reliability and stability of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs). It is important and necessary to develop an effective method for the prediction of the crack propagation behavior of TBCs. In this study, an extended finite element model (XFEM) based on the real microstructure of nanostructured TBCs was built and employed to elucidate the correlation between the microstructure and crack propagation behavior. Results showed that the unmelted

more »

... nano-particles (UNPs) that were distributed in the nanostructured coating had an obvious "capture effect" on the cracks, which means that many cracks easily accumulated in the tensile stress zone of the adjacent UNPs and a complex microcrack network formed at their periphery. Arbitrarily oriented cracks mainly propagated parallel to the x-axis at the final stage of thermal cycles and the tensile stress was the main driving force for the spallation failure of TBCs. Correspondingly, I and I–II mixed types of cracks are the major cracking patterns.