Investigator: William Brown
Co-Investigator: Sharad Yedave, Ajay Malshe
Department: Mechanical Engineering
E-mail: wdb@uark.edu
The tribology, chemistry, and physics of material interactions at mating surfaces under extreme environmental conditions experienced by launch vehicles, spacecrafts, and related aerospace units drive the need for durable interfaces having novel ambient adaptive material phases. For example, varying temperature conditions demand solid lubricants that can operate in a wide temperature range, but are chemically stable. Commonly used single-phase coatings, such as MoS2 or ZnO, etc., can only address a limited parameter window. However, novel combinations of material phases in combination with new coating processes allow temperature adaptive composite solid lubricant coatings to be created. The goal of this project is to develop novel, controlled, contamination-free, time-efficient, scalable, and low cost coating materials and techniques for aerospace and related applications. The coating technique employs a combination of electrostatic spray coating (ESC) and chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) for the synthesis of solid lubricants and hard material composite coatings. The success of the program is established through testing of the coatings in an industrial environment.
