07/21/17: Lee and Colleagues Publish Foundational Research on Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing

Jae-Hwang Lee, the head of the Nano-Engineering Laboratory in the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department, is a member of a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary team of researchers who co-authored a fundamental materials research article on cold spray additive manufacturing published in the prestigious journal Nature Scientific Report. Cold spray is a materials consolidation process that utilizes micron-sized particles and accelerates them at supersonic velocities through a de Laval rocket nozzle. The impacting particles undergo extreme plastic deformation and then consolidate, thus forming a dense coating with a near net-shaped quality.

Cold spray can create metal parts with properties comparable to those of wrought metals for certain alloys, such as 5056 Aluminum. Cold spray can also be used to join dissimilar metals and to repair damaged parts. The process can be used for metals, polymers, cermets, and/or combinations of these to produce materials not achievable by conventional technologies….