The scientific objective of the proposed EIF project is to develop new methods for the prediction of allowable service life times of cooled, thermal barrier coated single crystal Ni-base-superalloys. Both technologies (single crystal and thermal barrier coatings) are nowadays in the technological introduction for heavy industrial gas turbines for power conversion. Although there exist some approaches for the estimation of allowable service life, mainly derived for aircraft jet engine gas turbines, the research community and manufacturer of gas turbines continuously state the demand of adequate and reliable approaches for lifetime prediction. The complex nature of thermal barrier systems, which usually consist of a metallic corrosion protective and a ceramic thermal barrier coating, requires an interdisciplinary approach. Research Centre Juelich is involved in the field of protective coatings since about 7 years with experimentally oriented work. A comprehensive view of damage processes has been developed by the collaboration of four research groups. The first draft of a new life time prediction concept on the basis of simulating the damage kinetics has been developed, but does not include all important aspects of damage evolution. Mr Bialas from the Polish Academy of science has gained excellent knowledge in the field of simulating damage at heterogeneous interfaces on the basis of FEM. He has developed a method using cohesive interfacial elements, which shall be transferred to TBCs. The proposed project shall train Mr Bialas to become an independent researcher. He is envisaged to lead group of young researchers at Polish Academy of Science and to adapt the methods and model approaches he has learned during this project to other engineering topics, which are generally connected to interfacial damage problems.