Wear Resistance Improvement of an Iron-Based Thermal Spray Coating

Project Description

Project Overview:  Thermal spraying is a technology which improves or restores the surface of a solid material. The process can be used to apply coatings to a wide range of materials and components, to provide resistance to: wear, erosion, cavitation, corrosion, abrasion or heat. Thermal Spray Technologies (TST) is looking for improvement to their current iron-based thermal spray coating to increase wear resistance in agricultural applications (blades).   While coatings increased the overall life span of blades, corrosion and repeating use still degrades over time.   The objective and goal of this project is to research and characterized desirable chemistry and materials properties and optimize the process/materials properties to improve existing iron-based spray coatings.  The team will utilize SEM, optical microscopy, and a wear test (TST provided).

Client:  Joe Zanter, Thermal Spray Technologies

Student Team: Majid Alotaibi, Shannon Egan, Garrett Gueltzow, Lauren Porcelli