Experimental study of titanium/aluminium deposits produced by cold gas dynamic spray

Results of optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, porosity and microhardness tests are presented for co-deposited titanium/aluminium materials produced by cold gas dynamic spraying. Cold gas dynamic spray (CGDS) is a rapidly developing coating technology, in which spray particles are deposited through plastic impact on a substrate at velocities of up to 700 m/s and virtually at room temperature. In these experiments, the process produced a reasonably dense material that is a mixture of aluminium and titanium regions, which because of the low temperatures involved have not alloyed together. This paper reports the effect of deposition parameters on the structures formed. In addition, preliminary heat treatment of these titanium/aluminium deposits has shown that they can be readily converted into intermetallic materials.