Investigation of the Deposition Mechanism of Cold Spray onto Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRPs) are more and more used in a wide range of industries, especially in the aerospace industry, but their low electrical conductivity has limited their application. During the past few years, metallization of CFRP has attracted increasing interest. To make the polymer composites electrically conductive, a conductive media must be either embedded into or coated onto the composites. Cold spray is one coating approach to achieve this. In this work, metallic powders were cold sprayed onto the CFRPs used in aircraft by using two different cold spray systems. The coatings as well as the coating/substrate interfaces were characterized and the deposition mechanism onto the CFRP substrate was determined.