Fabrication of Aluminum Coating onto CFRP Substrate by Cold Spray

Abstract

Carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) has a great potential application in aircraft fuselage due to its light weight, high specific stiffness and high specific strength. It is crucial to coat the CFRP surface with an electrically conductive material to avoid the damage from lightning strike. Cold spray process has been developed for metallic coating technique. In this study, aluminum coating was fabricated onto the CFRP substrate using interlayer was investigated. It was difficult to fabricate cold-sprayed aluminum coating directly on the CFRP substrate. Though smaller size aluminum particles could be deposited on the CFRP substrate, but the coating was peeled off when the thickness was around 30 mm. On the other hand, it was possible to deposit aluminum coating on the CFRP substrate by plasma spray process. Our proposed structure is using a thin plasma-sprayed aluminum interlayer on the CFRP substrate before doing the cold spray. The interlayer with larger contact area could retain on the substrate and able to facilitate the deformation of the next incoming cold-sprayed particles to build a thick coating. The volume resistivity of cold spray coating is lower than the plasma sprayed aluminum coating because of high process gas temperature in the latter case enhances the oxidation of sprayed particle. Therefore, lower process gas temperature should be used to fabricate lower volume resistivity coating on cold spray.

Characterization of Cold-Spray Coatings on Fiber-Reinforced Polymers through Nanoindentation Tests

“…For this reason, the height of the aluminum coatings is lower than the height of the steel coating. However, it is known from the literature that the particle deformation is a key factor for bonding to occur [33][34][35], meaning that it is very difficult for the upcoming aluminum particles to remove the first layer as it remains firmly anchored to the polymer surface. Hence, the main result obtained is that for CFPP-Al1, the coating deposition seems to be better than the AISI-based coating, and the particles seem to be bonded with the substrate, thus promoting the coating formation and grow-up.…”

Electrical Conductivity of Metal–Polymer Cold Spray Composite Coatings onto Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymer

“…In 2011, Zhou et al [2] reported difficulties when dealing with cold spray of copper on the same materials. Affi et al [3] reported similar difficulties while spraying on carbon fiber reinforced epoxy.…”

Investigation of Cold Spray on Polymers by Single Particle Impact Experiments

“…Metallization of polymers has received increasing attention in a wide range of applications during the past few decades (Ref 1). In the early 1990s, the evolution in microelectronics industry stimulated intensive research on this topic due to the great need for miniaturization and reduction Among these technologies, cold spray has been demonstrated to be a feasible approach to metallize polymers and polymeric composites ( Ref 3,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13). In particular, cold spray features low processing temperatures, which will minimize the thermal damage to the polymeric substrates compared to other thermal spray technologies.…”