Mobile Metal Manufacturing Technologies for Repair and Retrofit of Infrastructure Systems

VRC Metal Systems (VRC) and Northeastern University (NU) propose a joint effort to develop point-of-need hybrid repair technologies, that can be applied specifically to repairing bridge and railways structures. During the feasibility phase I effort, a robust coating repair system was developed and subsequently applied to railway steel. While the repair method worked on large gouges, it failed to bridge narrow cracks. In this work, both VRC and NU will investigate hybrid repair methods, such as, cold spray and secondary processing, cold spray and laser-glazing, wire-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) and cold spray for the specific purposes of repairing complex geometry and improving the performance of the repair. This phase II program will also investigate additional cold spray repair coating systems, to ensure the most robust repair method is deposited. Lastly, VRC will build and implement a mobile high-pressure cold spray unit and design a mobile trailer system for point-of-need repairs. A complete repair will be demonstrated at the completion of this program.