Beaker to Bomber – Computational Modeling Reduces Technical and Commercial risk in Transitioning Promising Coating Technologies from the Laboratory to Full Scale

Rose, Alan

New materials and coatings are constantly being developed and evaluated to meet the twin needs of lightweighting for fuel efficiency, and eliminating toxic materials for regulatory compliance. There is increasing pressure to bring new materials and coatings to market faster, at lower costs and with higher quality. The viability of a new coating rests on how we address the following challenges;

Technical performance - corrosion resistance, strength, stiffness, weight
Financial/commercial risk – scale-up and transition
Service performance - within the complete structure in the environment and over the lifetime of operation
Legislative compliance - is the material permitted now and in the future?

New materials or surface treatments are subjected to qualification tests to ensure mechanical and chemical properties. A coating or process may be very promising in the laboratory but the challenge of full commercialization remains. Can the production of the material be scaled to a level appropriate for its end use? There is a huge difference between uniformly applying an excellent corrosion resistant coating on a 2 inch square test coupon and applying the same coating to a large, complex, 12 foot landing gear.

There is also a very large difference between performance in laboratory tests and in the field where the material or coating will be subjected to a combination of stresses, corrosion attack, temperature excursions, etc.

While we are still a long way from being able to model the entire lifecycle of a component, we have however, made very significant steps. Using examples of zinc nickel and cobalt phosphorous electroplating, this paper demonstrates how data from a laboratory scale characterization of an alloy coating process can be combined with an FEA computational technique to accurately predict the outcome at full-scale. This capability greatly accelerates the scale-up and commercialization process, significantly reducing financial and technical risk.