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

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