Cold spray coating of wood for cabinet making applications

Thermal spray technology has been widely used in the last decades for creating coatings onto metal substrates. This study is focused on an original metal-wood assembly obtained by cold spray. A constant correlation between experimental and numerical tests has been adopted. The analysis of geometrical features of the wood structure at micro scale was necessary to identify the properties of the deposition surface. Next, both high pressure and low pressure cold spray tests were conducted to obtain aluminium, tin, copper, silver coatings onto four species of wood. To better understand the dependency of deposition efficiency on spray conditions, a computational fluid dynamics tool was developed to compute particle speed and temperature evolution. Then, a series of finite element simulations of single- and multi-particle impacts onto local structures of the wood, as observed from SEM and microtomography images of the specimens, were performed. A classical pull-off test of the specimens was used to collect data about adhesion strength and behaviour. A numerical counterpart of the test was developed, enabling the comparison of macroscopic adhesion behaviour of the real interfaces with that of virtual interfaces, created from microscale impact modelling. Wood industry and high-end design will profit from this work.