Experimental and numerical study of residual stress evolution in cold spray coating

Residual stresses are among the most important factors affecting the properties and service lifetime of materials and components. In the cold spray coating process there are two contradictory factors that influence the final residual stress state of the coated material; the impact of the high velocity micron-size particles induces compressive residual stresses, whereas the gas temperature can have an opposing annealing effect on the induced stresses. These two simultaneous phenomena can in turn change the residual stress profile, thus complicate the assessment of the final residual stress state. In this paper the residual stress evolution during cold spray coating process has been studied through experimental measurements and numerical simulations performed on several series of samples coated using different spray process parameters. A detailed finite element (FE) analysis of the process has been developed to calculate the stresses induced through impacts and then the annealing effect has been taken into account through an analytical model. The results of the experiments and numerical–analytical approach confirm the considerable effect of annealing on the eventual stress distribution in the coated samples.