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

Alternative coating approaches are required to apply wear resistant materials onto the interior surfaces of high strength steel landing gear components. These components have traditionally contained electroplated chrome coatings. Unfortunately, hexalavent chrome is used during this process. This form of chrome is very toxic and expensive to dispose of. Government regulations now require a usage reduction of hexavalent chrome by 50% before the end of 2006. Several other deposition options for applying wear resistant coatings are being considered. However, coating the non line-of-sight regions of some components is difficult. As a result, 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. In this work, we will develop advanced wear 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 from a source to the substrate to enable the interior surfaces of landing gear components to be coated at high rate. The goal for this work will be to identify coating compositions having good wear properties that are specifically designed to allow the uniform deposition of dense layers onto the interior surfaces of landing gear components. Success in this objective will offer the military a pathway toward production implementation of new coatings optimized for use in vapor deposition systems and a new deposition process for applying the coatings onto complex components.