Polyamide1010 (PA1010) and its composite with nanometer-sized zirconia (PA1010/nano-ZrO2) coatings were deposited using a flame spray process. The kinetics of nonisothermal crystallization of PA1010/nanoZrO(2) composite coatings was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at various cooling rates. Several different analysis methods were used to describe the process of nonisothermal crystallization. The results showed that the modified Avrami equation and Mo's treatment could describe the nonisothermal crystallization of the composite coatings very well. The nano-ZrO2 particles have a remarkable heterogeneous nucleation effect in the PA1010 matrix. The values of halftime and Z(c) showed that the crystallization rate increased with increasing cooling rates for both PA1010 and PA1010/nano-ZrO2 composite coating, but the crystallization rate of PA1010/nano-ZrO2 composite coating was faster than that of PA1010 at given cooling rate. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.