Investigation of the Effect of Low-Temperature Annealing and Impact Angle on the Erosion Performance of Nickel-Tungsten Carbide Cold Spray Coating Using Design of Experiments

This study investigates the solid particle erosion performance of cold sprayed tungsten carbide-nickel coatings using alumina particles as erodent material. After coating fabrication, specimens were annealed in an electric furnace at a temperature of 600 °C for 1 hour. The coatings were examined in terms of microhardness and microstructure in the as-sprayed (AS) and annealed (AN) conditions. Subsequently, the erosion tests were carried out using a General Full Factorial Design with two control factors and two replicates for each experimental run. The effect of the annealing on the erosion behavior of the coating was investigated at the two levels (AS and AN conditions), along with the impact angle of the erodents at three levels (30°, 60°, 90°). Finally, two regression models that relate the impact angle to the mass loss were separately obtained for the two cold spray coatings.