Effect of Pre and Post Processes on Cold Spray Coating Properties

Although research has been reported on pre and post processes for cold spraying, quantitative results are lacking. This study aims to quantify the effect of pre-coat grit blasting and post-spray stress relief and annealing treatments on cold-spray coating microhardness, bond strength, and microstructure. It was found that stress relief treatments reduce hardness, but have little effect on adhesion. Annealing also reduces hardness, but is shown to significantly improve adhesive bond strength. Grit blasting, on the other hand, was found to have a detrimental effect on tensile adhesion strength with little impact on coating microhardness.