Novel Processing Approach for Depositing Wear Resistant Coatings onto Landing Gear Components

Alternative coatings and coating approaches are required to improve the wear and corrosion resistance of the interior of landing gear components. These surfaces have traditionally contained electroplated chrome and cadmium coatings. Unfortunately, hexalavent chrome (used during the chrome plating process) and cadmium are toxic and expensive to dispose of. Thus, government regulations require a usage reduction of these materials of 50% before 2007. Other deposition options for applying protective coatings are being considered. However, the required combination of excellent non-line-of-sight coating capability, high deposition rates, environmental inertness and compositional flexibility has been difficult to achieve using conventional coating approaches. Here, we will develop advanced wear and corrosion resistant coating materials and apply them using a next generation physical vapor deposition technique. The approach provides unique control of the transport of vapor atoms to enable the interior surfaces of components to be coated at high rate. The goal for this work is to develop coating compositions having excellent wear and corrosion properties that are specifically designed to allow the deposition of dense layers during vapor deposition at low substrate temperatures and to apply them onto the interior surfaces of landing gear components. Wear and corrosion testing will assess their performance.