Diagnostics of Cold-Sprayed Particle Velocities Approaching Critical Deposition Conditions

In cold spraying, the impact particle velocity plays a key role for successful deposition. It is well known that only those particles can achieve successful bonding which have an impact velocity exceeding a particular threshold. This critical velocity depends on the thermomechanical properties of the impacting particles at impacting temperature. The latter depends on the gas temperature in the torch but also on stand-off distance and gas pressure. In the past, some semiempirical approaches have been proposed to estimate particle impact and critical velocities. Besides that, there are a limited number of available studies on particle velocity measurements in cold spraying. In the present work, particle velocity measurements were performed using a cold spray meter, where a laser beam is used to illuminate the particles ensuring sufficiently detectable radiant signal intensities. Measurements were carried out for INCONEL^® alloy 718-type powders with different particle sizes. These experimental investigations comprised mainly subcritical spray parameters for this material to have a closer look at the conditions of initial deposition. The critical velocities were identified by evaluating the deposition efficiencies and correlating them to the measured particle velocity distributions. In addition, the experimental results were compared with some values estimated by model calculations.     

Novel Online Diagnostic Analysis for In-Flight Particle Properties in Cold Spraying

In cold spraying, powder particles are accelerated by preheated supersonic gas stream to high velocities and sprayed on a substrate. The particle velocities depend on the equipment design and process parameters, e.g., on the type of the process gas and its pressure and temperature. These, in turn, affect the coating structure and the properties. The particle velocities in cold spraying are high, and the particle temperatures are low, which can, therefore, be a challenge for the diagnostic methods. A novel optical online diagnostic system, HiWatch HR, will open new possibilities for measuring particle in-flight properties in cold spray processes. The system employs an imaging measurement technique called S-PTV (sizing-particle tracking velocimetry), first introduced in this research. This technique enables an accurate particle size measurement also for small diameter particles with a large powder volume. The aim of this study was to evaluate the velocities of metallic particles sprayed with HPCS and LPCS systems and with varying process parameters. The measured in-flight particle properties were further linked to the resulting coating properties. Furthermore, the camera was able to provide information about variations during the spraying, e.g., fluctuating powder feeding, which is important from the process control and quality control point of view.     

An analysis of the cold spray process and its coatings

In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and extensive spray tests were performed for detailed analyses of the cold spray process. The modeling of the gas and particle flow field for different nozzle geometries and process parameters in correlation with the results of the experiments reveal that adhesion only occurs when the powder particles exceed a critical impact velocity that is specific to the spray material. For spherical copper powder with low oxygen content, the critical velocity was determined to be about 570 m/s. With nitrogen as the process gas and particle grain sizes from 5–25 μm, deposition efficiencies of more than 70% were achieved. The cold sprayed coatings show negligible porosity and oxygen contents comparable to the initial powder feedstock. Therefore, properties such as the electrical conductivity at room temperature correspond to those of the bulk material. The methods presented here can also be applied to develop strategies for cold spraying of other materials such as zinc, stainless steel, or nickel-based super-alloys.     

Cold Gas-Sprayed Deposition of Metallic Coatings onto Ceramic Substrates Using Laser Surface Texturing Pre-treatment

Cold spraying enables a variety of metals dense coatings onto metal surfaces. Supersonic gas jet accelerates particles which undergo with the substrate plastic deformation. Different bonding mechanisms can be created depending on the materials. The particle–substrate contact time, contact temperature and contact area upon impact are the parameters influencing physicochemical and mechanical bonds. The resultant bonding arose from plastic deformation of the particle and substrate and temperature increasing at the interface. The objective was to create specific topography to enable metallic particle adhesion onto ceramic substrates. Ceramic did not demonstrate deformation during the impact which minimized the intimate bonds. Laser surface texturing was hence used as prior surface treatment to create specific topography and to enable mechanical anchoring. Particle compressive states were necessary to build up coating. The coating deposition efficiency and adhesion strength were evaluated. Textured surface is required to obtain strong adhesion of metallic coatings onto ceramic substrates. Consequently, cold spray coating parameters depend on the target material and a methodology was established with particle parameters (diameters, velocities, temperatures) and particle/substrate properties to adapt the surface topography. Laser surface texturing is a promising tool to increase the cold spraying applications.     

Influence of Helium and Nitrogen Gases on the Properties of Cold Gas Dynamic Sprayed Pure Titanium Coatings

This study investigates the effect of propellant gas, helium, and nitrogen during cold spraying of titanium coatings. Coatings were characterized by SEM and were evaluated for their deposition efficiency (DE), microhardness, and porosity. In selected conditions, three particle velocities were investigated in which for each condition, the propelling gases?? temperature and pressure were attuned to attain similar particle velocities for each gas. Observations show that loosely bonded particles can be detached by high-pressure supersonic gas stream. Selected coatings were characterized by XPS to analyze the occurrence of oxidation and nitridation. Although generally accepted that coating characteristics can be affected by particle temperature, results show that for the same particle velocity, DE and coating density are also a function of substrate temperature. In addition, a thick and fully dense cold sprayed titanium coating was achieved with optimized spray parameters and nozzle using helium. The corresponding average particle velocity was 1173 m/s.     

冷喷涂制备金属涂层及其在增材制造应用中的研究进展

冷喷涂由于具有粉末加热温度低、涂层中氧含量及孔隙率较常规热喷涂涂层显著降低等特点,而广泛应用于制备各种类型的涂层或块体材料。近年来,冷喷涂设备及工艺的改善使其在增材制造和零件修复方面也具有极大的应用前景。综述了冷喷涂制备高性能软质相金属和硬质相金属/非金属涂层的研究进展,重点围绕原始颗粒结构、冷喷涂工艺参数、添加第二相和后处理手段对涂层制备及性能优化的效果进行总结,并对冷喷涂制备复合涂层的结合机理进行了阐述,包括软质相颗粒形成单一涂层和添加硬质相颗粒复合涂层的结合机理,且涂层中颗粒之间的结合主要为机械结合、物理结合、冶金结合和化学结合中的一种或多种结合形式。同时,介绍了冷喷涂技术在增材制造领域和零件修复方面的研究进展和存在的问题。最后,分析总结了冷喷涂的应用前景和存在的问题。     

New developments in cold spray based on higher gas and particle temperatures

In cold spraying, bonding is associated with shear instabilities caused by high strain rate deformation during the impact. It is well known that bonding occurs when the impact velocity of an impacting particle exceeds a critical value. This critical velocity depends not only on the type of spray material, but also on the powder quality, the particle size, and the particle impact temperature. Up to now, optimization of cold spraying mainly focused on increasing the particle velocity. The new approach presented in this contribution demonstrates capabilities to reduce critical velocities by well-tuned powder sizes and particle impact temperatures. A newly designed temperature control unit was implemented to a conventional cold spray system and various spray experiments with different powder size cuts were performed to verify results from calculations. Microstructures and mechanical strength of coatings demonstrate that the coating quality can be significantly improved by using well-tuned powder sizes and higher process gas temperatures. The presented optimization strategy, using copper as an example, can be transferred to a variety of spray materials and thus, should boost the development of the cold spray technology with respect to the coating quality. This article was originally published inBuilding on 100 Years of Success, Proceedings of the 2006 International Thermal Spray Conference (Seattle, WA), May 15–18, 2006, B.R. Marple, M.M. Hyland, Y.-Ch. Lau, R.S. Lima, and J. Voyer, Ed., ASM International, Materials Park, OH, 2006.     

基于稳定最大应变的冷喷涂粒子临界速度预测

利用ABAQUS显式有限元分析软件,对冷喷涂铜粒子与铜基体的碰撞过程进行了欧拉法数值分析.结果表明,欧拉模型可有效模拟冷喷涂粒子碰撞变形行为,粒子撞击基体形貌的模拟结果与试验观察吻合较好.在不同碰撞速度下,最大等效塑性应变均会快速上升并达到各自稳定值,并且在290～400 m/s内稳定等效应变最大值基本不变,但随着粒子速度增加,粒子扁平化程度、与基体结合面积与金属射流量均明显增加.最后,结合金属射流形貌与等效塑性应变稳定最大值的变化规律,提出了一种冷喷涂粒子临界速度预测的新方法,计算获得了20 μm铜粒子冷喷涂临界速度约为290m/s.     

Effect of the Shape Factor on the Cold-Spraying Dynamic Characteristics of Sprayed Particles

Silicon powder was chosen to be deposited by cold spraying for the consideration of possible applications in lithium ion batteries. The influence of the silicon particle shapes other than spherical on the impact velocity and temperature for different working parameters of the gas streams have been numerically investigated by using computational fluid dynamics modeling. The results show that, for same equivalent diameter, the particle impact velocities increase to a maximum velocity when the shape factor increases to a certain value and then decreases to the impact velocity of spherical particles. In the cold-spraying process, the particle velocity profile for smaller shape factors is much closer to that of the gas stream due to the larger particle surface area. Furthermore, the particle impact velocity increment for smaller shape factors is much more remarkable with a higher main propulsion gas temperature and higher carrier gas pressure. The effect of raising the main propulsion gas pressure on the impact velocity of the particles with very smaller shape factors is negligible. The particle impact velocity and temperature can be altered by not only the change of the working parameters of the gas steams but also the change of the sizes and shapes of the sprayed particles.     

Effect of Nozzle Material on Downstream Lateral Injection Cold Spray Performance

In cold gas dynamic spraying, the gas nature, process stagnation pressure and temperature, and the standoff distance are known to be important parameters that affect the deposition efficiency and coating quality. This investigation attempts to elucidate the effect of nozzle material on coatings produced using a downstream lateral injection cold spray system. Through experimentation, it is shown that the nozzle material has a substantial effect on deposition efficiency and particle velocity. It is proposed that the effects are related to complex interaction between the particles and the internal nozzle walls. The results obtained lead to the conclusion that during the particle/nozzle wall contact, a nozzle with higher thermal diffusivity transfers more heat to the particles. This heat transfer results in lower critical velocities and therefore higher deposition efficiencies, despite a noticeable reduction of particle velocities which is also attributed to particle-nozzle interactions.     

Warm Spray Forming of Ti-6Al-4V

Warm spray (WS) is a modification of high-velocity oxy-fuel spraying, in which the temperature of the supersonic gas flow generated by the combustion of kerosene and oxygen is controlled by diluting the combustion flame with an inert gas such as nitrogen. The inert gas is injected into the mixing chamber placed between the combustion chamber and the powder feed ports, thus the temperature of the propellant gas can be controlled from ~700 to 2,000 K. Since WS allows for higher particle temperatures in comparison to cold spray, warm sprayed particles are more softened upon impact, thus resulting in greater deformation facilitating the formation of shear instability for bonding. Recently, the combustion pressure of WS has been increased from 1 (low-pressure warm spray) to 4 MPa (high-pressure warm spray) in order to increase the velocity of sprayed particles. Effects of spray parameters on microstructure, mechanical properties, and splats formation of Ti-6Al-4V were systematically studied. Obtained coatings were examined by analyzing the coating cross-section images, microhardness as well as oxygen content. In addition, flattening ratio of splats was calculated as a function of nitrogen flow rate. It was found that the increased particle velocity caused by the increased combustion pressure had significant beneficial effects in terms of improving density and controlling the oxygen level in the sprayed Ti-6Al-4V coatings.     

冷喷涂粒子速度-温度协同作用及复合喷涂新工艺研究进展

从冷喷涂粒子速度与温度协同问题出发,归纳总结了影响冷喷涂涂层质量的主要因素,并在此基础上,重点综述了喷嘴结构、气体类型与性质、粒子形态与材料等工艺参数与粒子速度-温度的作用关系.提高喷枪喷嘴扩张段膨胀比,改善黏性效应,提高高速区面积,使用高热扩散系数材料的喷嘴,均能够显著改善粒子速度-温度的协同效果.在工业应用中,可采用喷丸辅助冷喷涂、激光辅助冷喷涂、静电辅助冷喷涂、真空冷喷涂等新型复合沉积技术,实现高强低塑性喷涂粒子材料的沉积成形.最后,就如何深入研究速度-温度高质量协同并获得高质量涂层进行了展望.     

Study of the Influence of Particle Velocity on Adhesive Strength of Cold Spray Deposits

The adhesion mechanism of deposit/substrate interface prepared by the cold spray method is not fully understood at present. It seems that the adhesion strength is mainly determined by the mechanical (including the plastic deformation of particle and substrate) and thermal interaction between particle and substrate when the particles impact onto the substrate with a high velocity. In order to understand the adhesion mechanism, a novel adhesive strength test was developed to measure the higher bonding strength of cold sprayed coatings in this study. The method breaks through the limits imposed by glue strength in the conventional adhesive strength test, and it can be used to measure the coatings with a higher adhesive strength. The particle velocity was obtained with DPV-2000?measurement and CFD simulation. The relationships between the adhesion strength of deposits/substrate interface and particle velocity were discussed. The results show that stronger adhesion strength can be obtained with the increase of particle velocity. There are two available ways to improve the adhesion strength. One is to increase the temperature of working gas, and another is to employ helium gas as the working gas instead of nitrogen gas.     

Investigation of Deposition Behavior of Cold-Sprayed Magnesium Coating

Two types of magnesium powders with different particle size distributions were deposited by cold spraying at different main gas temperatures. The effects of gas temperature and particle size distribution on the deposition efficiency of particles were studied. The microstructure of coatings was observed, and the porosity of coatings was evaluated. The deposition efficiency of particles increased, and the porosity of coatings decreased with the increase of gas temperature. The deposition efficiency of particles increased when using the powder with a smaller particle size distribution. Stainless steel and aluminum plates were used as substrates. The bonding strength and mechanism between the coating and substrate were studied. The commercial finite element software ABAQUS was used to help us better understand the deformation behavior of particles and substrates. The mean bonding strength slightly increased when aluminum plates were used as substrates. The bonding mechanism of Mg coatings on stainless steel and aluminum substrates was discussed.     

Influence of Impact Conditions on Feedstock Deposition Behavior of Cold-Sprayed Fe-Based Metallic Glass

Cold spray is a promising method by which to deposit dense Fe-based metallic glass coatings on conventional metal substrates. Relatively low process temperatures offer the potential to prevent the crystallization of amorphous feedstock powders while still providing adequate particle softening for bonding and coating formation. In this study, Fe₄₈Mo₁₄Cr₁₅Y₂C₁₅B₆ powder was sprayed onto a mild steel substrate, using a variety of process conditions, to investigate the feasibility of forming well-bonded amorphous Fe-based coatings. Particle splat adhesion was examined relative to impact conditions, and the limiting values of temperature and velocity associated with successful softening and adhesion were empirically established. Variability of particle sizes, impact temperatures, and impact velocities resulted in splat morphologies ranging from well-adhered deformed particles to substrate craters formed by rebounded particles and a variety of particle/substrate interface conditions. Transmission electron microscopy studies revealed the presence of a thin oxide layer between well-adhered particles and the substrate, suggesting that bonding is feasible even with an increased oxygen content at the interface. Results indicate that the proper optimization of cold spray process parameters supports the formation of Fe-based metallic glass coatings that successfully retain their amorphous structure, as well as the superior corrosion and wear-resistant properties of the feedstock powder.     

Deposition Behavior of Copper Fine Particles onto Flat Substrate Surface in Cold Spraying

Cold spray is a promising process to fabricate high-quality metallic coatings. However, it is necessary to improve some properties, especially the adhesive strength of the coating to the substrate to clarify deposition mechanism of the solid particles onto substrate surface. In this study, deposition behavior of the cold sprayed copper fine particles was observed precisely and the adhesive strength of the coating was evaluated. The deposition behavior of the sprayed individual copper particles on mirror polished stainless steel substrate was fundamentally investigated. The interface microstructure between sprayed particle and substrate revealed that an amorphous-like band region was recognized at interface during coating fabrication at high power conditions. For the deposition mechanism of the cold sprayed particles onto substrate surface, it was indicated that the deformation of the particles initially induce the destruction of its surface oxide and an appearance of the active fresh surface of the material may enhance the bonding between particles and substrate. On the other hand, in coating fabrication at high power condition, bonding between particle and substrate may be possibly formed via oxygen-rich amorphous-like layer at interface.     

Impact Conditions for Cold Spraying of Hard Metallic Glasses

As compared to thermal spray techniques, cold spraying allows to retain metastable phases of the feedstock material like amorphous structures, due to lower process gas temperatures. Compared to crystalline metals, metallic glasses are brittle at ambient temperature but viscous at higher temperatures. Therefore, cold spray parameters must be optimized for conditions that allow softening of the amorphous spray material for successfully producing coatings. For this study, a FeCoCrMoBC metallic glass was used that in comparison to others offers advantages with respect to higher hardness, less costly feedstock powder, and minimum reactivity with the environment. Necessary impact conditions were investigated to meet the window of deposition in cold gas spraying. According to calculations and cold spray experiments, neither the glass transition temperature T _g nor the melting temperature T _m can describe required conditions for bonding. Thus, a so called softening temperature between the glass temperature and the melting temperature had to be defined to calculate the critical velocity of metallic glasses. With respect to the bonding mechanism, impact morphologies could prove that a transition to viscous flow gets more prominent for harsher spray conditions. By sufficiently exceeding the critical condition for bonding, coatings with rather dense microstructures can be processed at deposition efficiencies of about 70%. The coatings have a hardness of 1100?HV 0.3, but the results also demonstrate that further work is still needed to explore the full potential for bulk metallic glasses.     

Particle loading effect in cold spray

Cold gas dynamic spray is a line-of-sight, high-rate material deposition process that uses a supersonic flow to accelerate small particles (micron-sized) above a material-dependent critical velocity. When the particles impact the substrate, they plastically deform and bond to form a coating. The objective of this research is to investigate the influence of the particle mass flow rate on the properties of coatings sprayed using the cold spray process. Varying the mass flow rate at which the feedstock particles are fed into the carrier gas stream can change the thickness of the coating. It was shown that poor coating quality (peeling) was not a result of flow saturation but, instead, the result of excessive particle bombardment per unit area on the substrate. By increasing the travel speed of the substrate, this can be overcome and well-bonded dense coatings can be achieved. It has also been shown that by heating the carrier gas flow poor coating quality is avoided. The original version of this paper was published in the CD ROM Thermal Spray Comects: Explore Its Surfacing Potential, Interational Thermal Spray Conference, sponsored by DVS, ASM International, and HW International Institute of Welding, Basel, Switzerland, May 2–4, 2005, DVS-Verlag GmBH, Düsseldorf. Germany.