Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) are widely used in the latest generations of aircraft, but their high erosion rate and low heat resistance is a concern for safe and long-term use. Thus, the metallization method of CFRP to form multi-material is preferable to enhance heat resistance and erosion resistance. Temperature effects on the coating formation behavior was investigated in this research.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) are widely used in the latest generations of aircraft, but their high erosion rate and low heat resistance is a concern for safe and long-term use. Thus, the metallization method of CFRP to form multi-material is preferable to enhance heat resistance and erosion resistance. The surface morphology of the cold-sprayed samples obtained at varied gas temperatures are shown in Fig. 1. Sn coatings were successfully deposited at gas temperatures of 473 and 523 K. The coating width widened, and the coating surface became dense as increased the gas temperature. By contrast, at 573 and 623 K, the CFRP substrate was severely eroded, and the surface erosion was more noticeable along the middle line of the cold-sprayed area. Epoxy decomposed in the fashion of fiber exposure. Intricately broken fibers and melted Sn clusters were inhomogeneously distributed. Therefore, surface erosion of CFRP becomes severe as increasing the gas temperature due to the impacting energy from particles and over-heated impinging gas.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) are widely used in the latest generations of aircraft, but their high erosion rate and low heat resistance is a concern for safe and long-term use. Thus, the metallization method of CFRP to form multi-material is preferable to enhance heat resistance and erosion resistance. The surface morphology of the cold-sprayed samples obtained at varied gas temperatures are shown in Fig. 1. Sn coatings were successfully deposited at gas temperatures of 473 and 523 K. The coating width widened, and the coating surface became dense as increased the gas temperature. By contrast, at 573 and 623 K, the CFRP substrate was severely eroded, and the surface erosion was more noticeable along the middle line of the cold-sprayed area. Epoxy decomposed in the fashion of fiber exposure. Intricately broken fibers and melted Sn clusters were inhomogeneously distributed. Therefore, surface erosion of CFRP becomes severe as increasing the gas temperature due to the impacting energy from particles and over-heated impinging gas.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) have been universally applied in the field of aerospace and automobile due to their high strength and lightweight characters. However,they are often vulnerable to thermal effects in harsh working conditions. Therefore,the metallization of CFRPs by cold spray technology is one promising strategy to enhance its thermal conductivity, and improve the thermal resistance without severe superficial erosion due to the negligible thermal effects of cold spray. In this study, the epoxy fracture during cold spray was examined by numerical analyses.With the gas temperature increasing, epoxy was gradually distorted by shear damage. The distortion usually initiates from the epoxy/CF interfaces then propagates to other areas.
Because of their high specific strength, carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) are widely used in the aerospace industry. Metallization of CFRP by cold spraying as a surface modification method can improve the low thermal resistance and electrical conductivity of CFRP without the need for high heat input. Herein, we cold spray a Sn coating on cured CFRP substrates and examine the Sn/epoxy interface. The results suggest that the Sn coatings are successfully obtained at a gas temperature of 473 K and indicate no severe damage to the CFRP substrates. The stress and plastic strain distributions at the cross-section of the Sn/CFRP interface when a Sn particle is impacted onto the CFRP substrate are obtained using the finite element method.
Metalization of carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs) is promising for corrosion protection, substrate conductivity enhancement, and lightweight application because epoxy as the matrix has low conductivity, corrosion resistance, and strength. (Refs 1,2) Previous results show that tin coating can be cold-sprayed on CFRP; However, stable coating thickness and other deposition properties could not be ensured. The bonding mechanism is not entirely understood. In this work, various deposition behaviors of multilayered tin coatings derived from different temperatures (473K, 5253K, 573K, 623K) are investigated. Furthermore, the bonding mechanism of tin particles and CFRP substrate are explored. Based on the results, it was proposed that when cold spraying metals on CFRP, it is necessary to control the temperature properly to avoid surface erosion, epoxy degradation, and carbon fiber fracture because multilayer coating mainly depends on the quality of the first layer. The effects of temperature on coating thickness and width, erosion depth, roughness, deposition deficiency (DE), coating hardness, and adhesion strength are discussed. Last but not least, the optimal temperature was found.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) are widely used in the latest generations of aircraft, but their high erosion rate and low heat resistance is a concern for safe and long-term use. Thus, the metallization method of CFRP to form multi-material is preferable to enhance heat resistance and erosion resistance. Researchers have developed multiple kinds of methods to prevent these consequences, cold spray, as a promising spraying technology has been employed in metalization of polymer-based materials, as indicated in Fig. 1. Ti was selected as the coating material because it has similar stiffness with CFRP under the same strength and its lightweight performance than other metals.