Fretting Wear and Scratch Resistance of Cold-Sprayed Pure Cu and Ti

Abstract The paper analyses the fretting and wear behavior of pure copper and pure titanium coatings realized through cold spray. The coatings were designed and produced by employing processing conditions leading to minimum porosity and high hardness; these conditions were 700 °C and 40 bar for Ti powders and 400 °C and 30 bar for Cu ones. The low porosity and high strength materials led to high resistance to wear damaging through the optimal energy dissipation upon fretting. Due to the sprayed particles deformation mode, the sprayed materials show non-uniform hardening along the deposition distance. As a matter of fact, hardness varied in the range 3.7–4.2 GPa for Ti coatings and 1.5–2 GPa for the Cu ones depending on the distance from the substrate and on the coatings thickness. This influenced the materials properties and the response to the wear damaging. This was demonstrated by the scratch tests performed on coatings with different thicknesses. Those coatings sprayed in major thickness revealed the best wear resistance due to the deformation hardening. The harder coatings also revealed brittle fracture at the experienced highest loads.