Superhydrophobic surfaces that are durable and can be easily manufactured are of high interest for many industrial applications. Measuring and understanding roughness in the context of superhydrophobicity is the first step in creation of a surface that does not require activation to be hydrophobic. In this study, the as sprayed surface of different cermet (WC-10Co4Cr and Cr3C2-25Ni20Cr) coatings produced by High Velocity Air Fuel (HVAF) spraying – have been investigated to assess their wetting ability. In order to address the challenges raised by the specific roughness profile of thermal spray surfaces, two routes have been adapted and used for surface characteristics analysis i.e. statistical and fractal. Results show that both methods have a strong correlation to wettability. Roughness parameters Sdq and Sdr show good correlation with advancing contact angle. Hausdorff Dimension of a sub-micrometer profile shows good relation with the contact angle and provides information for state of the droplet. To determine how to increase the contact angle of the coating surface, coating parameters such as CGS Density have been correlated with Hausdorff Dimension. Both methods provide good understanding in terms of wettability of rough cermet surfaces. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Superhydrophobic surfaces are of great importance in many industrial applications, especially where components are exposed to wet environments and low temperatures.Texturing of surfaces to reach superhydrophobicity can be achieved by thermal spraying technology, which is an attractive coating method as it is cheap, flexible and can employ a large range of feedstock materials. In this study, ceramic reinforced metal matrix composite (WC-CoCr) powders were sprayed using High Velocity Air Fuel method. They were varied based on their powder parameters such as carbide grain size, binder grain size and powder strength. The purpose was to investigate their hydrophobic characteristics and how these are influenced by different roughness profiles. The wetting properties such as contact angle and contact angle hysteresis were first investigated for the as-sprayed coatings. The roughness properties and Hausdorff Dimension were then related to the wetting properties. Aside from as-sprayed coatings, the effect of roughness and inherent wetting characteristics were studied by investigating the coating surface after grit blasting and polishing. Results show that powder parameters can lead to designing surfaces with higher surface roughnesses and thus having higher contact angles. It was also shown that surface composition of cermets has an impact on wettability, with the binder accounting for wetting characteristics and carbides accounting for roughness. 

This paper provides a comprehensive characterisation of HVOF- and HVAF-sprayed Cr3C2–25 wt.% NiCr hardmetal coatings. One commercial powder composition with two different particle size distributions was processed using five HVOF and HVAF thermal spray systems.All coatings contain less Cr3C2 than the feedstock powder, possibly due to the rebound of some Cr3C2-rich particles during high-velocity impact onto the substrate.Dry sand-rubber wheel abrasive wear testing causes both grooving and pull-out of splat fragments. Mass losses depend on inter- and intra-lamellar cohesion, being higher (≥70 mg after a wear distance of 5904 m) for the coatings deposited with the coarser feedstock powder or with one type of HVAF torch.Sliding wear at room temperature against alumina involves shallower abrasive grooving, small-scale delamination and carbide pull-outs, and it is controlled by intra-lamellar cohesion. The coatings obtained from the fine feedstock powder exhibit the lowest wear rates (≈5x10−6 mm3/(Nm)). At 400 °C, abrasive grooving dominates the sliding wear behaviour; wear rates increase by one order of magnitude but friction coefficients decrease from ≈0.7 to ≈0.5. The thermal expansion coefficient of the coatings (11.08x10−6 °C−1 in the 30–400 °C range) is sufficiently close to that of the steel substrate (14.23x10−6 °C−1) to avoid macro-cracking

Lowering the thermal energy and increasing the kinetic energyof hard metal particles sprayed by the newly developed HVAF systems can significantly reduce their decarburization, and increases the sliding wear and corrosion resistance of the resulting coatings, making the HVAF technique attractive, both economically and environmentally, over its HVOF predecessors. Two agglomerated and sintered feedstock powder chemistries, WC-Co (88/12) and WC-CoCr (86/10/4), respectively, with increasing primary carbides grain size from 0.2 to 4.0 microns, have been deposited by the latest HVAF-M3 process onto carbon steel substrates. Their dry sliding wear behaviors and friction coefficients were evaluated at room temperature via Ball-on-disk (ASTM G99-90) wear tests against Al<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf> counterparts, and via Pin-on-disk (ASTM G77-05) wear tests against modified martensitic steel counterparts in both dry and lubricated conditions. Sliding wear mechanisms, with the formation of wavy surface morphology and brittle cracking, are discussed regarding the distribution and size of primary carbides. Corrosion behaviors were evaluated via standard Neutral Salt Spray, Acetic Acid Salt Spray, accelerated corrosion test, and electrochemical polarization test at room temperature. The optimization of the tribological properties of the coatings is discussed, focusing on the suitable selection of primary carbide size for different working load applications. © 2015 ASM International

Fe-based coatings with three particular elemental compositions and two different powder particle size were prepared by high-velocity air fuel (HVAF) and high-velocity oxy fuel (HVOF) techniques. The corrosion behavior of which were comparatively studied in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. The results indicated that the coatings produced by HVAF process exhibited denser structure with lower porosity. Polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests indicated that the HVAF coatings provided better corrosion resistance than the HVOF coatings. The presence of defects was significant in HVOF coatings. The investigation illustrated that the corrosion paths initiated and grow through defects of the coating. Furthermore, adding Cr strongly improved the corrosion resistance of the coatings. The results confirmed that the cheap HVAF process could be a potential alternative to HVOF to fabricate Fe-based coatings for industrial applications.

Lowering the thermal energy and increasing the kinetic energy of sprayed particles by newly developed HVAF systems can significantly reduce material decarburization, and increases sliding wear and corrosion resistance of hard metal coatings, making HVAF coatings attractive both economically and environmentally over its HVOFs predecessors. Two agglomerated and sintered feedstock powder chemistries, respectively WC-Co (88/12) and WC-CoCr (86/10/4), with increasing primary carbides grain size from 0.2 to 4.0 microns, have been deposited by the latest HVAF-M3 process onto carbon steel substrates. Respective dry sliding wear behaviours and friction coefficients were evaluated at room temperature via Ball-on-disk (ASTM G99-90) wear tests against Al₂O₃ counterparts, and via Pin-on-disk (ASTM G77-05) wear tests against modified martensitic steel counterparts in both dry and lubricated conditions. Sliding wear mechanisms, with formation of wavy surface morphology and brittle cracking, are discussed regarding the distribution and size of primary carbides. Corrosion behaviours were evaluated via standard Neutral Salt Spray (NSS), Acetic Acid Salt Spray (AASS), accelerated corrosion test and electrochemical polarization test at room temperature. Optimization of coating tribological properties are discussed regarding the suitable selection of primary carbide size for different working load applications

his paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the sliding and abrasive wear behaviour of WC–10Co4Cr hardmetal coatings, representative of the existing state-of-the-art. A commercial feedstock powder with two different particle size distributions was sprayed onto carbon steel substrates using two HVOF and two HVAF spray processes.Mild wear rates of < 10-7 mm3/(Nm) and friction coefficients of ≈ 0.5 were obtained for all samples in ball-on-disk sliding wear tests at room temperature against Al2O3 counterparts. WC–10Co4Cr coatings definitely outperform a reference electrolytic hard chromium coating under these test conditions. Their wear mechanisms include extrusion and removal of the binder matrix, with the formation of a wavy surface morphology, and brittle cracking. The balance of such phenomena is closely related to intra-lamellar features, and rather independent of those properties (e.g. indentation fracture toughness, elastic modulus) which mainly reflect large-scale inter-lamellar cohesion, as quantitatively confirmed by a principal component analysis. Intra-lamellar dissolution of WC into the matrix indeed increases the incidence of brittle cracking, resulting in slightly higher wear rates. At 400 °C, some of the hardmetal coatings fail because of the superposition between tensile residual stresses and thermal expansion mismatch stresses (due to the difference between the thermal expansion coefficients of the steel substrate and of the hardmetal coating). Those which do not fail, on account of lower residual stresses, exhibit higher wear rates than at room temperature, due to oxidation of the WC grains.The resistance of the coatings against abrasive wear, assessed by dry sand–rubber wheel testing, is related to inter-lamellar cohesion, as proven by a principal component analysis of the collected dataset. Therefore, coatings deposited from coarse feedstock powders suffer higher wear loss than those obtained from fine powders, as brittle inter-lamellar detachment is caused by their weaker interparticle cohesion, witnessed by their systematically lower fracture toughness as well.