Characterisation of cold sprayed Al5056/SiC_p coating: effect of SiC particle size

The present paper studied the effect of SiC particle size on microstructure and mechanical properties of Al5056/SiC_p composite coatings. A wide powder size range varying from 2 to 67 μm assured the differences in the particle velocity and kinetic energy of the used SiC powders. Simulation results show that the velocity of SiC particle decreases with the increase of the particle size, while the kinetic energy greatly increases with the increase of particle size. The experimental microstructure observations show that the SiC content in the coatings decreases with the decrease of the SiC particle size under the bow shock effect due to the inferior kinetic energy. The microhardness of all the composite coatings is higher than that of the pure Al5056 coating, and the SiC powder in the coating could play a double face effect on the cohesion strength of the coatings.