Non-Destructive Evaluation of Bonded Interface of Cold Spray Additive Repair

Cold spray repair technology offers a means to extend the life of a wide variety of components for U.S. Army craft.  However, there is still a need to develop NDE procedures on cold spray repairs to parts to ensure flight worthiness, especially for flight critical parts.  In this work, Texas Research Institute (TRI) Austin will team with Worchester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and leverage their relationship with Solvus Global to demonstrate how pulse-echo ultrasound inspection technologies can be used to identify porosity and bondline quality in cold spray repairs.  Ultrasound is ideal for this type of inspection, as the bondline between the cold-spray and substrate is well defined, attenuation of the ultrasonic signal and backwall loss can be used to identify porosity, and experimental results have already shown that the cold spray material can be easily penetrated with ultrasound.  Phase I will focus on developing methodologies for thin, medium, and thick coated specimens with known and well characterized defects.  Phase I results will transition into Phase II, which is anticipated to focus on transitioning the methodology into a system that can be used for practical inspections of repairs in whatever scenario is required.