Metallization of carbon fibre reinforced polymer for lightning strike protection

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRPs) are more and more used in a wide range of industries, but their low electrical conductivity has limited their application. Especially in the aerospace industry, the low conductivity of CFRP used in aircrafts would result in a lightning strike problem. To make the polymer composites electrically conductive, a conductive media must be either embedded into or coated onto the composites. During the past few years, metallization of CFRP has attracted increasing interest, and cold spray is one coating approach to achieve this. In this work, metallic powders were cold sprayed onto the CFRP 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. Lightning tests were performed on the coated CFRP to fully evaluate the potential of cold-sprayed coatings as prospective lightning strike protection materials.