Cold Spray Coating Deposition Mechanism on the Thermoplastic and Thermosetting Polymer Substrates

Cold spraying is a successful and promising coating technique for many engineering applications due to its high-rate and high-dense coating development abilities. Nevertheless, their practical use in polymer substrate is still in the fledgling phase. There are very few articles about the cold spray coating on polymers; however, the interaction of metallic particle with the polymer substrate is poorly understood, and thus a thick coating has not successfully been developed on the polymer substrate. In order to rationalize as full as possible the entire behavior of the high velocity particle with the polymer substrate, we used thermoplastic and thermosetting polymer materials as substrates. The particle behaviors with the substrate were observed under various gas pressure and temperature, and with various particles feed rate. The result showed that the particle behaviors were unique with respect to the substrate. Also it was clearly understood that the metal particles not experienced any plastic deformation due to the soft nature of the polymer substrates. The particles attached to the thermoplastic substrate either through adhesive bonding and/or mechanical inter locking, whereas only pure localized fracture observed on the thermosetting substrate and thus no particles attached firmly on the substrate.