Estimating the Effect of Helium and Nitrogen Mixing on Deposition Efficiency in Cold Spray

Cold spray is a developing technology that is increasingly finding applications for coating of similar and dissimilar metals, repairing geometric tolerance defects to extend expensive part life and additive manufacturing across a variety of industries. Expensive helium is used to accelerate the particles to higher velocities in order to achieve the highest deposit strengths and to spray hard-to-deposit materials. Minimal information is available in the literature studying the effects of He-N-2 mixing on coating deposition efficiency, and how He can potentially be conserved by gas mixing. In this study, a one-dimensional simulation method is presented for estimating the deposition efficiency of aluminum coatings, where He-N-2 mixture ratios are varied. The simulation estimations are experimentally validated through velocity measurements and single particle impact tests for Al6061.