Numerical Simulations of the High-Velocity Impact of a Single Polymer Particle During Cold-Spray Deposition

In this paper, deposition of polymer powders was studied numerically for the cold-spray deposition technique. In cold spray, a solid particle is impacted on a substrate at high velocity. The deformation and heating upon impact have been shown to be enough to result in particle deposition and adhesion even without melting the particle. Here, a systematic analysis of a single high-density polyethylene particle impacting a semi-infinite high-density polyethylene substrate was carried out for initial velocities ranging between 150 and 250 m/s using the finite element analysis software ABAQUS Explicit. A series of numerical simulations were performed to study the effect of a number of key parameters on the particle impact dynamics. These key parameters include particle impact velocity, particle temperature, particle diameter, composition of the polyethylene particle, surface composition and the thickness of a polyethylene film on a hard metal substrate. The effect of these parameter variations on the particle impact dynamics were quantified by tracking the particle temperature, deformation, plastic strain and rebound kinetic energy. The trends observed through variation of these parameters provided physical insight into the experimentally observed window of deposition where cold-sprayed particles are mostly likely to adhere to a substrate.