High Performance Cold Spray Nozzle Without Helium

Cold Spray repair systems have the potential to produce cost effective high quality repairs to a broad range of high value assets.Ā Recent advance have demonstrated the ability to create high density low porosity repairs that return parts to near original specifications.Ā Unfortunately, for materials such as aircraft aluminum, titanium and high strength steels, the use of helium is needed to obtain sufficiently high particle speeds to get low porosity and high quality repairs.Ā By using a novel nozzle design, the high particle speeds necessary for low porosity high quality repairs can be achieved with air or nitrogen.Ā The use of air or nitrogen as a carrier gas greatly reduces cost, even when accounting for additional electric power required when using air or nitrogen at higher Mach numbers to achieve the same velocity as helium.Ā The Phase I effort will design and test a nozzle to demonstrate the ability of the cold spray system to achieve cost effective low porosity high quality repairs on prototypical materials.Ā The cold spray deposition made with the nozzle system will be tested to measure the performance of this new nozzle design for porosity, adhesion and mechanical properties relative to new and damaged coupons.