Abstract
Cold spraying has a high potential for building up thick coatings or structures, like for rapid prototyping or production of free-standing parts. This method is particularly interesting for high strength materials that are difficult to process or to shape, e.g. Titanium for special applications in aviation industries. In this contribution, the two major challenges are addressed: (I) optimizing mechanical properties by systematic variation of process parameters, and (ii) evaluating the influence of the spray angle with respect to complex geometries as requested by aviation industry. While in the past, high quality titanium coatings were only achieved using Helium as process gas, Nitrogen is used in this study to reduce costs. High deposition efficiencies of more than 95 % can be obtained and the coatings show very low porosities as well as high tensile strength of over 480 MPa. The influence of process conditions on the mechanical properties is discussed on the basis of coating microstructures, Micro Flat Tensile (MFT) and Tubular Coating Tensile tests (TCT-test).
