For thermally sprayed coatings, beside good wear and corrosion resistance there is also a need for a good coating/substrate adhesion, reduced porosity and reduced level of residual stresses. Residual stresses that occur in the substrate/coating system are very significant because their relaxation can cause different coating failures. In this paper, different approaches to investigation of residual stresses in thermally sprayed coatings, have been presented. An analytical model (authors Tsui and Clyne) was used to estimate the distribution of residual stresses in flame sprayed and fused NiCrBSi coatings. These data can be used as input data for the numerical model