Development of Fe-Mn alloy coatings using Coaxial laser assisted cold spray process

Abstract

The usage of aluminum in the automobile industry has been significantly increasing but they have poor tribological properties. The purpose of the study is to develop a low-cost coating using suitable material to increase the wear properties of widely used Aluminum alloys. The material used is the Iron manganese (Fe-Mn) alloy because it's one of the hardest steels and its wear resistance is superior to the conventional stainless steels. Fe-Mn alloy is tended to oxidation and depletion of manganese during the conventional spray processes. So, from all the thermal processes cold gas dynamic spray eliminates the oxidation process helping in the deposition of the Fe-Mn alloy. To improve the efficiency a novel Co-axial laser assisted cold spray process with a dual feed rectangular nozzle has been utilized. The coatings were developed at different laser powers and constant parameters in a 4.5" diameter and 0.5" thick Aluminum 6061 pucks. The influence of laser on the coatings were then investigated using microstructure & phase analysis, micro hardness, wear resistance, and bond strength analysis.